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107. Once he completed his spring 1840 article for the Philosophical Magazine Draper moved quickly to other projects. It is conceivable that Draper gave the images away as some sort of souvenir after using the contents to complete his article. In this scenario, he would have allowed someone to select a "souvenir" from the group of error plates saved to write the article. This might have occured either before destroying or "instead of keeping" the images. If there were more than a dozen error plates saved for the article up to this point, the excess may have been destroyed (or further dispersed) after this "collector" filled the plate box with the images of interest to him.

Each visible image within the plate box depicts a different man. The fact that all significant players may be represented, heightens the possibility that someone selected the plates as a representative sample of experiments. On the other hand, each portrait appears to represent the use of a different lens system, which could also indicate the intention of selection. In this scenario the fact that each picture represents a different man may just be chance.

Why was the plate box not brought forward by whomever owned it in 1858 during the investigation of the Mechanic's Committee of the American Institute? Conceivably the plate box images passed into someone else's possession at an extremely early date. Years later Draper might easily have forgotten that any survived. In 1858 after the passage of 18 years, the owner who now possessed the plate box would have likely been out of touch with Draper and not even aware of the limited controversy which surrounded the question "who took the first portrait." After all, the entire controversy was contained within the obscure confines of three photographic societies.

It was not until publicity surrounded New York University's exhibition of the Dorothy Catherine Draper daguerreotype at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition that the question was publicized in a widespread manner. This was 53 years after the plate box may have passed out of the possession of the Draper family and into the hands of some anonymous individual. In 1893 the owner was probably deceased or too old to remember the images or their significance.

Why is there no documentation of the plate box images within the 46 cartons of John William Draper Family Papers in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress? In 1865 the New York University Medical School burned down. Draper lost an extensive library, his lecture notes, the notebooks in which he recorded his laboratory investigations, and all of his chemical, physical, and physiological apparatus kept at the school. [Donald Fleming, John William Draper and the Religion of Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), 113.] In the writer's search through the family papers which remain in the Library of Congress there was a massive preponderance of post-1865 papers for every earlier document or letter. This proportion held true for all categories of papers from correspondence to receipts. The best explanation is that any notes Draper may have kept concerning his portrait experiments were lost in 1865 along with all other primary documentation of his 1840s experiments with radiant energy. Nothing of this kind exists in the Library of Congress collection. In later years when writing his memoirs, Draper used only published articles that documented his experiments and otherwise relied upon his memory.

Why did Draper never mention the plate box images himself when asked about the first portraits? Most of Draper's earlier correspondence must not have survived the 1865 New York University fire. For eighteen years after he took the first portraits, Draper was rarely questioned specifically concerning his work. Before 1858 it was generally not an issue that occurred to anyone. During this early period, taking the first portrait was only important to Draper as an accomplished fact. He believed that the issue was completely settled by his claims published in 1840 scientific journals. Before 1858 he occasionally declared that he had taken the first portrait, usually when also describing Samuel Morse's development of the electro-magnetic telegraph. Draper enjoyed pointing out that both technological innovations occurred about the same time in nearby rooms in the New York University building. Draper used the pair of achievements to illustrate how practical benefits were potentially possible at an educational institution like the University of the City of New York.

Before 1858 on the few occasions that Draper wrote about his early portrait work, he always referred back to his 1837-40 articles on radiant energy and photography published in scientific journals. He rarely added any detail that was not contained within those articles.

The 1858 investigation headed by the Mechanic's Committee of the American Institute put the first direct request to Draper for additional information concerning his work. This request was basically in the form of an open challenge to his claim. See McManus, "It Was I Who Took The First," 83-84. For the first time since 1840 Draper sat down and wrote out a detailed description of the events as he recalled them. The resultant article clarified much of the information in his 1840 articles and added further details. The rough draft version of this letter in the Draper Papers at the Library of Congress is especially important for all its specific detail (some omitted from the published letter). At one point in the article Draper stated that he could "relate to you many interesting incidents of our [Morse & Draper's] conjoint trials, disappointments, and eventual success, which would doubtless interest you, but they are perhaps not what you are not looking for now." Unfortunately Draper was never asked for the further elaboration he might have provided at this time.

After 1858 Draper became quite famous for his prolific and controversial writing in history and philosophy. The flood of letters he wrote and received through the 1870s nearly all pertain to this work. His time was further dispersed by his active family and teaching schedule at New York University. It is quite obvious to anyone investigating Draper's life during this era that experimentation with portraits accomplished at the dawn of the daguerreian era held little importance for him. The daguerreotype itself passed out of usage and was replaced with a plethora of new and "better" photographic processes. Draper's reputation and expertise had always dwarfed the discipline of photography and now inflated far beyond its practice or history. His resignation as president of the American Photographic Association in 1866 is indicative of his waning interest.

Only twice before his death in 1882 was Draper ever again required to think closely about his first experimentation with daguerreian portraits.

In 1873 Draper chanced upon an obscure claim to taking the first portrait that Morse had made before his death. A rebuttal, published in "Early Photography," Scribner's Monthly Magazine, 7 (March 1874): 630-31, was Draper's last detailed defense of his claim to the first portrait. In this article he clarified and defended against specific facts in Morse's account. Beyond this, few additional details are thrown to the reader interested in the history of photography.

In 1878 Professor C. F. Chandler, a lecturer on the history of photography, asked Draper for information to answer certain attacks against his first portrait claim. Obviously weary of a subject which had never held much importance to him, Draper answered Chandler in the same fashion he had followed all his life. He used details from what he had already written down. The arguments he provided Chandler were drawn almost entirely from his 1874 Scribner's article.

Busy and preoccupied, Draper always followed this pattern. For 18 years he referred all inquiries to the original articles he published in 1840. For the next 15 years he referred all inquiries to the explanation he had made to the investigating committee of the American Institute. From 1874 untill his death in 1882 Draper referred all inquiries to his defense against Morse's challenge in Scribner's.

In his 1878 letter to Professor Chandler Draper held out one last tantalizing opportunity. His letter concluded, "These my dear Dr. Chandler are some facts. If you want any more I can give you plenty." Regretfully for the history of photography, Dr. Chandler never requested additional information.

Even if Draper somehow knew of the existence of the plate box images after 1840, it is conceivable that he would never have mentioned them or sought to display them as evidence. Important early daguerreotypes exist in the Draper Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. One is a still life, probably made in conjunction with Samuel Morse. Another is possibly a view of the Unitarian Church behind New York University which provided the subject for Morse & Draper's first daguerreian experiments. A third daguerreotype in this collection is an early portrait, possibly of Samuel Morse himself. See McManus, "Daguerreian Treasures", 255.

John Draper's descendants gave this material to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1970s. All these images must have been available to Draper during his lifetime. If he ever felt an inclination to explain, prove, or illustrate the early history of photography using pictorial examples rather than the written word, Draper might have exhibited or at least mentioned these images. If he chose never to mention daguerreotypes to which he had definate access, the same preference could explain why he never mentioned or attempted to exhibit the plate box images, even if he somehow remembered that they existed.

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