daguerreotype

/dəˌgɛrəˈtaɪp/

Other forms: daguerreotypes

An old-fashioned black-and-white photograph with a shiny, almost mirror-like surface is a daguerreotype.

The daguerreotype was named for its inventor, Louis Daguerre, known as one of the fathers of photography. Daguerre's 1837 process involved using a sheet of copper that was coated with a thin layer of silver and needed just 20 minutes of exposure; it replaced an earlier method that required eight hours to produce an image. Less expensive types of photography made the daguerreotype obsolete within 20 years, and today they're extremely rare.

Definitions of daguerreotype

1. noun

   a photograph made by an early photographic process; the image was produced on a silver plate sensitized to iodine and developed in mercury vapor
   type of:

   exposure, photo, photograph, pic, picture

   a representation of a person or scene in the form of a print or transparent slide; recorded by a camera on light-sensitive material