Photography debuted before the public twice in January 1839, with rival announcements in Paris and London introducing Louis Daguerre’s metal-plate process and William Henry Fox Talbot’s paper negative, respectively. Three months later came a less heralded, equally momentous event: the first reproduction of a photograph on a printed page. To illustrate an article on the utility of the new invention for botanists, Golding Bird exposed three fronds of fern in contact with a sensitized block of wood. The image was then carved into the block to produce an ink-bearing matrix, from which this cover plate was printed. Coincidentally, this issue of The Mirror also bears the first commercial advertisement for a camera.
Fac-Simile of a Photogenic Drawing on the cover of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, April 20, 1839. London: Printed and published by J. Limbird. Purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2020.9.