Birth of photography: the daguerreotype
France gives the world a way to capture a moment
In August 1839 Louis Daguerre's process for fixing images on silvered plates was made public at the French Academy of Sciences. The French government bought the invention and gave it to the world, and photography spread rapidly.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 14 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 11 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — same year
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — same year
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 4 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 8 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 24 years earlier
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 20 years earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 8 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — same year
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 14 years later
Americas
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — 17 years earlier
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 4 years earlier
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — 1 year earlier
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 7 years later
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 12 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 30)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 30)
- Karl Marx (aged 21)
- Queen Victoria (aged 20)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 18)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 11)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 5)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 79)
- Andrew Jackson (aged 72)
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt (aged 70)