Inscription on back of Robert Cornelius photo: "First light picture ever taken."

Thanks to the great Kottke.org for pointing me in the direction of a really fun feature on Oobject, which curates an amazing portfolio of historic firsts from the annals of photography. That includes the initial photo of a human face from 1838 (Robert Cornelius, pictured above, who was chosen for his utter handsomeness) to the first color photograph in 1861 to the first complete image of a molecule in 2009. Have a look at all the cool images.

By the way: Cornelius, a chemist born to Dutch immigrants, worked with fellow scientist Paul Beck Goddard to perfect the daguerreotype. He  took the photo of himself outside of his family’s Philadelphia lighting store. It was only in 1975 that evidence emerged that proved the original date of Cornelius’ self-portrait. The picture was off-center but not bad for the first photo of a face ever. Cornelius may have also been a ventriloquist. An excerpt about him from Godey’s Lady’s Book of 1840:

Take our photo. (Image by Sgomatham.)

“There is a young gentleman of this city, by the name of Robert Cornelius, one of the firm of the well known house of Cornelius, Son & Co., who has more genius than he yet supposes himself to possess. As a designer in the way of his profession, he has no equal; as a ventriloquist—but here we are getting into private life—as a Daguerreotypist his specimens are the best that have yet been seen in this country, and we speak this with a full knowledge of the specimens shown here by Mr. Gouraud, purporting to be, and no doubt truly, by Daguerre himself. We have seen many specimens by young Cornelius, and we pronounce them unsurpassable—they must be seen to be appreciated.

Catching a shadow is a thing no more to be laughed at. Mr. Cornelius, in one matter, has outstripped the great master of the art, a thing, by the way, peculiar to our countrymen; he has succeeded in etching his designs onto the plate, from which they cannot be removed by any effort. A few more experiments in this way, and we shall do without engravers—those very expensive gentlemen.”