The photographic camera below was made by John Millington, the first professor of natural philosophy at the University of Mississippi, 1848-1853. It was used for the daguerreotype process, revealed by the Frenchman, L.J.M. Daguerre early in 1839. It is now in the University Museum in Oxford.
This is an "American-style" camera, with chamfered edges on the lens-board at the left, and a slot, where the dark-slide holding the sensitized plate was inserted, on the right side on top. The lens is missing, something that one might expect of an early optical device left unused for a length of time in a busy physics department! The original lens was certainly lacking a shutter; the long exposures were timed by uncapping and capping the lens.
The camera below is designed to take pictures inside the mouth on plates
about 2 cm square. Either the ground-glass
focussing screen or the plate holder is placed in the left-hand side
of the wooden camera body. On the extension on the right-hand side is a
mirror and the holder for a small flash bulb. This unique piece of apparatus
is in the Greenslade Collection.
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