Earth’s Moon (1840)

Orphans in Space: Forgotten Films from the Final Frontier
special edition for Roger That! 2021

Daguerreotype of Earth’s moon (1840)
John W. Draper 

The Orphans in Space DVD cover image comes from the Draper Family Collection, housed in the New York University Archives. The collection includes celestial photographs taken by John William Draper (1811-1882) and his son Henry Draper (1837-1882). Both were physicians, professors of chemistry, authors, and amateur but innovative photographers — true polymaths. The many photographic copies derive from a 3.25″ x 2.75″ (“sixth plate”)  daguerreotype of the moon made (presumably) on March 26, 1840. A newly-appointed professor at what was then named the University of the City of New-York, the elder Draper created the image from the rooftop of the university’s Main Building on Washington Square (less than a block from where the Draper collection now resides, in NYU’s Bobst Library). Alongside its observatory, the rooftop featured a glass-enclosed photographic studio, where Draper and fellow faculty member Samuel F. B. Morse made some of the earliest daguerreotype portraits that year. 

Rather than the first photograph of the moon taken, this image is the earliest one among those known to survive. As early as 1837, photologist John W. Draper experimented with the effects of light (including moonlight) on salted paper. In 1838-39, after Louis Daguerre invented his method of fixing photographic images on metal plates, French astronomers asked their countryman to record the moon, but his attempts failed to maintain focus as the satellite moved during his long exposure times. After knowledge of daguerreotypy reached New York, both Morse and Draper had cameras made. 

used a camera literally made from a cigar box to render at least two images of the moon during the winter of 1839-40. The first, “about one-sixth of an inch in diameter,” was overexposed, the silver iodide on the copper plate turning black. The second, “nearly an inch” in diameter, fixed the light of a waning gibbous moon. Draper called it “deficient in sharpness” and “confused,” although the “position of the darker spots on the surface of the luminary was distinct” in this “stain.” (“Remarks on the Daguerreotype,” American Repertory of Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures, July 1840.)

On March 23, 1840, Draper reported this limited success to the New York Lyceum of Natural History. Three nights later he recorded a last-quarter moon (i.e., a visible half moon), the positive image mirror-reversed by his telescope. This detailed daguerreotype became the source from which many copies derived. By 2021, so many digital copies of this 1840 image populate the Internet, subject to so many manipulations of photographic variables, that it may be difficult to discern that each derives from the same source. Some reverse the image horizontally, vertically, or both. Others switch the positive-negative values. Some reproduce the later water-damaged daguerreotype plate; others the plate after its cleaning and restoration. Digital enhancements and alterations abound. Colors vary. Adding to the confusion of images, Henry Draper became a prolific astrophotographer. After building an observatory at his home in 1860, he took more than a thousand images of the moon, and later the sun, planets, comets, and stars. These were reprinted in both the popular press and scientific literature, as well as on lantern slides, stereographs, and other formats. A web search for “first photograph of the moon” is more likely to call up one of the son’s astrophotographs than his father’s landmark image. 

Many misidentifications continue to amplify the confusion. Here are just three examples.

• The stock photo giant Getty Images mislabels three different Henry Draper photographs of the full moon as J. W.’s 1840 daguerreotype. (Accessed Feb. 20, 2021).
• Time magazine’s “The First Photograph of the Moon” (Dec. 20, 2013) is illustrated with a photo of a full moon taken by Henry Draper (ca. 1860s) but captioned as Dr. J. W. Draper, 1840.
• In 2018, the National Museum of American History noted J. W. Draper’s birthday by tweeting Charles Beirstadt’s 1870s stereograph card “Moon at Last Quarter, from negatives taken by Prof. H. Draper” (1863).  

The provenance of the 1840 John W. Draper daguerreotype is difficult to trace. From the beginning, the scientist himself photographed his own photographs. “There is no difficulty in making copies of Daguerreotype pictures of any size,” he wrote. In the winter of 1839-40, “I made many copies of my more fortunate proofs . . . copying views on very minute plates, with a very minute camera.” Later, these were enlarged “to any required size, by means of a stationery apparatus.” What became of these daguerreotypes of daguerreotypes? In what ways did subsequent reproduction technologies alter the look of the original? 

Another variation came in 2019 with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition upon the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. “Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography” included the Draper daguerreotype on loan from NYU. The Met’s digital display of “Moon” (1840) on its website not only features a different color palette, it reverses the image’s horizontal and vertical orientation. Why?

The archival object (left) shows the moon in last-quarter phase, as it would have looked in the sky on March 26, 1840, the left half of the lunar surface illuminated. The Met inversion shows the surface on the right (as if in a first quarter phase). Does the Met more accurately replicate Draper’s very first daguerreotype, with a mirror-reversed image? Does it imitate how the physical print was displayed in the museum? Is it simply upside down? 

In 1960, some daguerreotypes were rediscovered amid a miscellany of Draper material, stored in the attic of Gould Memorial Library at NYU’s University Heights campus in the Bronx. Before an extended loan to the Smithsonian in 1962, the NYU Photo Bureau made a copy photograph, which bears a confusing label: “First known photograph of the moon was taken by John W. Draper ca. 1839-40. The spots in this photo are caused by mold and water damage on the original daguerreotype, which apparently no longer exists.” Contradictory evidence indicates that in the 1970s amateur astronomer John Pazmino purchased a damaged daguerreotype in a Greenwich Village bookstore, which became the source of the restored moon image. 

Since 1993, when the Smithsonian returned the moon photograph to the University Archives, experts have concluded that the daguerreotype is most likely that taken by John Draper in 1840. 

If so, its survival as an object happened against the odds. The senior Dr. Draper saw much of his work destroyed by an 1844 fire. Another devastating fire in 1866 obliterated the University Medical College, of which he was president. In addition to Draper’s own papers and apparatus, the invaluable collections of the Lyceum of Natural History, which NYU had taken in, were completely consumed by the flames. After the fire, the New York Evening Post, recognizing the need to protect museums and archives, wrote on May 25: “What we want in New York is a great fire-proof building, sufficiently capacious to afford shelter to all the societies which possess valuable collections.”

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Dan Streible, with research contributions from Ashley Sena-Levine, Simon Baatz, Nancy Cricco, Howard McManus, Len Walle, Deborah Jean Warner, and Gregory Wickliff, via publications and email correspondence 2010-12. 

Resources

Ewer, Gary W. The Daguerreotype: An Archive of Source Texts, Graphics, and Ephemera (2020), daguerreotypearchive.org. 

Gillespie, Sarah Kate. “John William Draper and the Reception of Early Scientific Photography.” History of Photography 36.3 (2012): 241-54. doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2012.675851

Guide to the Draper Family Collection MC.11, Draper Family Papers, (2019), New York University Archives.  Printed and published items relating to the family history, highlighting John William Draper as scientist, photographer, and medical faculty, as well as Henry Draper’s writings. 

Guide to the Draper Family Collection (1984), Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Archives Center.  Documents and photographs related to the scientific careers of members of the Draper family: John William, his son Henry, and grandsons John Christopher and Daniel. 

Pasachoff, Jay M., Roberta J. M. Olson, and Martha L. Hazen. “The Earliest Comet Photographs.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 27, no. 2 (May 1996): 129–45.   
          Note 3 spells out some of the contradictions in identification and provenance.  Bracketed additions are mine. “Don Trombino and John Pazmino inform us (1996) that the daguerreotype of the Moon [described in Trombino 1980] matches in detailed markings on the metal plates a set of faded daguerreotypes [plural?] filed at the New York University Archives and clearly labelled that they were taken by Draper, W. C. [sic] The circumstance leaves them no doubt that the daguerreotype Pazmino purchased in a Greenwich Village bookstore in the 1970s is the lost one, the best of Draper’s lunar daguerreotypes from 1840 (since the ones at New York University have all faded and show no lunar detail [?]); they conclude that it is the one exhibited at the New York Lyceum [April 1840] and long thought to have been destroyed. Dennis di Cicco (private communication, 1996) holds that the matter is still in doubt because the image shows more features on the Moon than implied by Draper’s comments about his daguerreotype.”

Trombino, Don. “Dr. John William Draper.” Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol. 90 (1980): 565-71.

Wickliff, Gregory A. “John William Draper’s Experiments in Light, Photography, and Photolithography.” The Daguerreian Annual (2011): 141-65.

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 Pages from the 2012 Orphans in Space DVD booklet.