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What happened on January 9th?
The world's first camera was announced
Matthew Jones
January 09, 2025
1839 The Announcement of the First Viable Camera
On January 9th, 1839, the French Academy of Sciences announced that Louis Daguerre and a partner had developed an efficient machine that could record images for posterity. Two months before publicly announcing the Daguerreotype process at the French Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jacques Louis Mandé Daguerre signed a contract with his relative Alphonse Giroux and the Maison Susse Frères to manufacture the cameras based on his specifications. The French government agreed to pay Daguerre a lifetime pension rather than issue him a patent, and the secrets behind the making of the first camera were released to the world. Soon, photographers worldwide produced “daguerreotypes” that captured black-and-white photos onto a silver copper plate.
The image shows the Susse Frères Daguerreotype camera from 1839, displayed at the Westlicht Photography Museum in Vienna, Austria.
🗞️Today’s Headlines
Everything important that’s ever happened on January 9:
2001 ─ Apple introduced iTunes, a new technology for distributing digital music that would change the way the world consumed music. Billions of songs have been downloaded since.
2005 ─ Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian Authority president, a position that he still holds (there has not been another election since). He is also the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
1960 ─ Construction began on the Aswan High Dam, damming the Nile River in Egypt. The dam was built to allow controlled flooding of the Nile River Delta for farming purposes and to provide hydroelectric energy.
1861 ─ Mississippi, following South Carolina, became the second US state to secede from the Union. Within the next month, five more states would follow suit, and the Civil War would begin in April.
🎂 Today’s Birthdays
On January 9, we’re singing to:
Richard Nixon 1913 ─ 37th president of the United States, who was elected to two terms as president, winning his second term in a landslide before resigning in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
J. K. Simmons (1955) ─ Venerated American character actor who won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his powerful portrayal of a brutal bandleader in Whiplash.
Catherine “Kate” Middleton (1982) ─ Princess of Wales who married into the British royal family when she wed Prince William in 2011 in a ceremony supposedly watched by two billion people.
🪦Who Died Today?
On January 9, we’re saying goodbye to:
Napoleon III (1873) ─ Democratically elected president of France from 1848–1851, who declared himself emperor and maintained power until 1870, when he was captured by Prussia.
Katherine Mansfield (1923) ─ Native New Zealander who became an acclaimed author and poet in Great Britain before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 34.
How Am I Doing?
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