Happy birthday, Louis-Jacques Daguerre

An image of Louis-Jacques Daguerre using his photography method.

It is the birthday of French artist Louis-Jacques Daguerre (1781), who is credited with creating the first practical photography method. Daguerre's images were exposed on metal plates that required chemical processing. Daguerre didn't patent his process in France. Instead, he gave the process to the French government to be given to the public. In exchange, he received a pension for the rest of his life. Daguerre also was famous for creating theatrical dioramas in Paris, and for painting and printmaking.

An inventor/photography buff's legacy

Bob Hope, Dinah Shore and Vice President Henry Wallace in a 
1940s photograph from Hehn's collection. Click images to enlarge.

When Lester C. Hehn passed away last year at age 85, he lived in a house in the middle of the woods in Sarasota County near Englewood. He had accumulated a large collection of vintage photographs.

Before he retired to Florida, Lester Hehn led an interesting life in a small town on Long Island about a half hour from the city, where he invented and manufactured devices that made life in the darkroom easier.

Lester Hehn was a 1947 graduate of MIT and kept in touch with his old school with generous donations. He prospered with his own firm, Lester C. Hehn Engineering, located in Port Washington, N.Y.

He invented an enlarging meter that helped photographers determine the density of their negatives. He sold the devices to photographers all over the country for $39.95 and a money-back guarantee. Then he proceeded improve upon his invention and also create other devices darkroom technicians found useful. There was a write-up about one invention of his in the June 1961 issue of Popular Mechanics.

1903 Brownie poster is part of collection.

Lester Hehn satisfied his yen for all manner of things related to photography by collecting ephemera and vintage photographs. Included in his collection, for instance, is a vintage 1903 poster advertising a Kodak Brownie. There are, of course, boxes and boxes of vintage photographs. Example: a 1940s era photograph of Bob Hope, Dinah Shore and Vice President Henry Wallace. Hope and Wallace are wearing aprons. Not sure what the occasion is. We’ll revisit some more of the photographs in the collection later.

One interesting item in the collection is a three-ring binder that offers a history of Hehn’s devices and a little explanation about them.

The notebook also contains a letter of endorsement for one of Hehn’s devices. The letter is from Stephen W. Plimpton, a one-eyed Boston photographer who became prominent there in the 1960s.

In the back of the notebook are envelopes from various countries, including Paraguay, Argentina, Jamaica, El Salvador, Pakistan and Tahiti. To each are affixed postage stamps from the various countries, all postmarked in the 1960s.

We’ll discuss some of the other items in Lester Hehn’s collection later. Check back with us.

Oh, and Lester’s Hehn’s wooded property? Sarasota County recently was negotiating to purchase it to add to the county’s park land.

Photo with a history and a mystery

Who are these people and what were they doing in Orlando? Click on the photo to enlarge it.

We came by this interesting item at a book fair in Chicago. It's a photograph apparently taken on January 16, 1908 in Orlando. That was a Thursday. Nothing else is known about it. Were they in town for some sort of ecclesiastical convention? Perhaps.

By then Florida was pretty well established as a winter getaway. The railroads and steamship lines of the two Henrys–Flagler and Plant–had been bringing tourists to the state for a couple of decades. The Congregational Assembly had been running Rollins College in nearby Winter Park for 24 years.

A convention of clergymen in Orlando? Why not?

There are at least 40 people in the picture, about half of them men. Several of the men wear clerical collars, and one in front appears to wear vestments of a clergyman. Right behind him is a woman who appears to be dressed as a nun.  Some of the men are in business suits.

Except for the nun, the women appear to be wearing dresses typical of the era and large hats with flowers or bows on them.

They are posed in front of an archway typical of a church but not much is visible of the shake-sided building.

Who these people are and what they were doing in Orlando remains a mystery for now. 

Any ideas? Let us know.

This is part of our collection of antique photographs.