Editing Ambrotype (section)

== History ==
{{See also|History of photography}}

The ambrotype was based on the wet plate [[collodion process]] invented by [[Frederick Scott Archer]]. Ambrotypes were deliberately underexposed [[negative (photography)|negatives]] made by that process and optimized for viewing as positives instead.<ref name="PBS">{{cite web|title=History of Photography|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eastman/timeline/|website=American Experience|publisher=PBS|accessdate=20 June 2014|location=Boston|year=1999|archive-date=14 July 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714143921/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eastman/timeline/|url-status=live}}</ref> In the [[United States|US]], ambrotypes first came into use in the early 1850s. In 1854, [[James Ambrose Cutting]] of Boston took out several patents relating to the process. Although Cutting, the patent holder, had named the process after himself, it appears the term, "ambrotype" itself may have been first coined in the gallery of [[Marcus Aurelius Root]], a well-known daguerreotypist, as documented in his 1864 book ''The Camera and the Pencil'' as follows:<ref>Root, Marcus. ''The Camera and the Pencil; or the Heliographic Art, its theory and practice in all its branches; e.g.-Daguerreotypy, photography, &c".'' Philadelphia, D. Appleton & Co., N.Y., 1864, pp. 372-373</ref>

<p style="margin-left: 40px">"After considerable improvements, this process was first introduced, in 1854, into various Daguerrean establishments, in the Eastern and Western States, by Cutting & Rehn. In June of this year, Cutting procured patents for the process, though Langdell had already worked it from the printed formulas.</p>

<p style="margin-left: 40px">"The process has since been introduced, as a legitimate business, into the leading establishments of our country. The positive branch of it; i.e. a solar impression upon one glass-plate, which is covered by a second hermetically sealed thereto, is entitled the "Ambrotype," (or the "imperishable picture"), a name devised in my gallery.</p>

Root also states (pp.&nbsp;373): "Isaac Rehn, formerly a successful daguerreotypist, in company with Cutting, of Boston, perfected and introduced through the United States the "Ambrotype," or the positive on glass." What isn't mentioned in the referenced book is the particular year in which the term "ambrotype" was first used.

Ambrotypes were much less expensive to produce than [[daguerreotype]]s, the medium that predominated when they were introduced, and did not have the bright mirror-like metallic surface that could make daguerreotypes troublesome to view and which some people disliked. An ambrotype, however, appeared dull and drab when compared with the brilliance of a well-made and properly viewed daguerreotype.

By the late 1850s, the ambrotype was overtaking the daguerreotype in popularity. In 1858, the New York City Police Department, inspired by the pioneering Criminal Investigation Department in Glasgow, Scotland, used ambrotypes to establish a "rogues' gallery", consisting of portraits of wanted criminals and arrested villains.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17575 | title=Ambrotypes: Positively Capturing the Past | journal=Material Culture Review | date=6 June 1993 | last1=Maurice | first1=Phillipe }}</ref> By the mid-1860s, the ambrotype itself was being replaced by the [[tintype]], a similar image on a sturdy black-lacquered thin iron sheet, as well as by photographic [[albumen paper]] prints made from glass plate collodion negatives.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Newhall |first=Beaumont |title=The history of photography: from 1839 to the present |date=1997 |publisher=Museum of modern art |isbn=978-0-87070-381-2 |edition=[5th] completely rev. and enlarged |location=New York}}</ref>