Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was born in 1787 and died in 1851.  He was first an apprentice in the theater. Parisians were very  interested in theatrical entertainment, so Daguerre had an audience for his work with light and images.  In the beginning of the nineteenth century a new form of entertainment, without actors, was panorama.  It consisted of huge paintings  exhibited in large interior spaces, which upon entering, the visitors would believe that they had been transported to a faraway city.
Daguerre’s illusionistic paintings and visual scenes were popular, and he was named the main stage designer for one of the most popular theaters in Paris.  He created the Diorama, which was a theatrical illusion using changing light and huge translucent paintings to make it seem like things were moving.  In panoramas people would walk from scene to scene but at the diorama, the audience sat still while the scenes changed around them.  His Diorama drew crowds and continued showing for three years.  After a while, the public wanted more improvements and so he worked still harder at new techniques.
He was thought of as a master of illusion and a magician of light.  He changed from working with the theater to focusing on light and images, which led him to photography.  In 1826, he met a man named Chevalier Niépce who saw his Diorama, and in December 1829, they made a ten year partnership to develop and perfect the heliographic process, an early form of printed photo which used translucent engravings in contact with a metal plate.  In between 1835 and 1837, Daguerre continued his discovery alone, because his thoughts on photography differed from Niépce, until he thought there was no more work to be done on it.
Daguerre transformed the camera obscura, a dark box with a hole that lets in light that shows an inverted imaged of what’s outside the hole, into a machine that produces its own permanent images of nature.  The camera obscura had mainly been used as a tool for drawing.  Daguerre created a practical way of taking photography and later on named it Daguerreotype.  He achieved this with a clear image with light parts in white mercury  and  silver amalgam, and dark parts made of a polished silver surface.  The image was produced by coating a copper plate with silver, exposing it to vapor of iodine and then putting the plate in a camera obscura.  Once the image was made, it was mobile, and was able to show people objects that weren’t actually present.  Daguerre’s improvements on photography made people curious about different places, and made them want to travel more, so they could see for themselves, what they were like.  This also educated people because it showed them things they couldn’t normally see without going to that place.
In 1837, Daguerre showed the chief curator at the Louvre a still-life composition that had an inscription on the back identifying his discovery.  In April 1838, Daguerre named his procedure as "Daguerréotype."  The process was used widely for twenty years, until it was replaced by newer methods that were more efficient.  The Daguerreotype was expensive to make, and it only produced mirror images.
Photography in general has, of course, advanced much since the nineteenth century.  Other inventions, such as television and photocopying, are extensions of photography, and could not have existed if photography had not been invented.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coe, Brian.  George Eastman and the Early Photographers.  Crane, Russak & Company, Inc., 1973.
Laidler, Keith J., To Light Such a Candle.  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.
Lowry, Bates.  The Silver Canvas.  The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1998.