Photography was about to make its appearance on the world's stage, although it did not yet bear the name of photography.
For some time now, the public had been closely following the work of research chemists and opticians, who in various countries had been trying to find a simple but effective method of reproducing faces and landscapes. The shop windows of the Palais-Royal put the latest drawing machines on display, the mysterious camera obscura and the elegant camera lucida with its long articulated arm. At the beginning of January 1839, the French newspapers announced that the eagerly awaited new invention was finally ready, and was of such a particular nature that a grand ceremony was going to be held in which scholars, artists and the Nation's leaders would come together to celebrate the universal significance of the new invention.
