Daguerreotype, Interesting Experiments

Noticing an article touching some interesting experiments detailed before the French Academy of Science, at a recent sitting, illustrative of the facility with which opaque surfaces will leave their own likenesses upon polished surfaces with which they may be placed in contact or even juxtaposition, without the agency of light, the Albany Argus says:

"We regard these experiments and developments as among the most interesting and wonderful to which the important discoveries of the indefatigable Daguerre have given the impulse, and as destined to give to this era a marked prominence in the history of scientific research and attainment.

"As connected with this subject, it may be mentioned here that we have among us artists, who, without any undue pretensions to science, are pursuing kindred experiments not unworthy perhaps of being recorded, if not among the archives of the academies at least in the newspapers of the day. The result of one of these experiments we had a sight of the other day, and, at the risk of being set down as novices in these matters, we make bold to speak of it as a discovery scarcely less important or wonderful than those which have been deemed worthy of notice by the French academicians. If ever achieved before, the young man who did it never heard of its having been attempted.

We allude to the production of an exact copy (reversed of course) of a Daguerreotype miniature upon a copperplate. The copy had all the warmth of tint of a fine drawing in what the artists call "burnt sienna," we believe, more agreeable to the eye than the original, and, we had almost said, even more vivid and distinct in the minute touches and gradations of shadow; and, what appeared still more remarkable to us, the original silver plate was undimmed in lustre, and the miniature upon it as fresh and distinct as ever.

No doubt copies of the same miniature might have been multiplied to an indefinite extent (or struck off, as the printers have it,) without injuring it in the least. "This impression in copper was produced in the way in which silver and other metals are plated or turned into gold by the galvanic process. The Daguerreotype plate was immersed in a solution of copper, the poles of the galvanic battery applied as usual, and the plate suffered to remain until the copper had formed, itself into another plate of sufficient thickness upon the silver. It was then removed, and the copper, cleaving readily from the silver, exhibit-d the reversed representation of the miniature which we have described in the position in which the subject sat. "The name of the successful experimenter (which we take the liberty to mention without his know-ledge) is James I. Jackson."