John Johnson (inventor)

John Johnson (May 28, 1813 – May 3, 1871) was a watchmaker mechanic technician, manufacturer of dental instruments, experimental photographer and inventor. With a business partner, Alexander S. Wolcott, he made the first patented camera that took photographs and started the world's first commercial portrait studio. Johnson developed portrait studio franchises throughout England and sold photography license rights. A Wolcott-Johnson's portrait camera made in 1840 was discovered in 1976 at the Saco Museum in Maine where Johnson had deposited it when he was its first curator.

Early life

Johnson was born in Saco, Maine, on May 28, 1813. His father was William Short Johnson. Johnson lived his childhood and got his initial schooling in Pembroke, New Hampshire. The first job he obtained was in 1832, as an assistant to a New York City watchmaker. In 1837 he formed a business with Alexander S. Wolcott on 52nd Street, making dental instruments.

Mid life and career

On October 6, 1839, Johnson showed Wolcott a detailed copy of the specifications on Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's method of capturing a likeness of a person. Wolcott was familiar with the mechanics of optics and experimented on improving Daguerre's basic methods of using lenses. He made a camera that day with improvements on the basic design. The camera was a wooden box 15 inches long, 8.5 inches high, and 8 inches wide, with a 7-inch concave mirror in the back.

The camera had a large opening in front where the light rays, reflected from the person, passed through an aperture to display their portrait image. The photosensitive two-inch exposure plate was in a detachable frame in the center of this aperture opening, just inside the box. The operator of the camera would set up the focusing of the portrait picture on a non-sensitized plate first. Once the camera was focused with all of the mechanical items involved, the camera operator would replace the focusing plate with the sensitized plate to take the picture.

Wolcott realized that exposure time could be reduced by improving the mechanical arrangement of the image-focusing process. He did this with a concave reflector of a 3–4 inch diameter that produced a short focus length. The focused image was formed onto a chemically treated silver surfaced plate that was sensitive to light. The plate was about 2×2.5 inches and could hold the picture indefinitely.

Photography portrait studios

Johnson and his partner Wolcott started experimenting with the Daquerre camera design on October 6, 1839. Wolcott had constructed a workable camera within 24 hours and took a picture of Johnson. Wolcott took this picture on October 7, the supposed first portrait in the world. On March 4, 1840, they opened the world's first commercial studio for taking portrait pictures of people in a salon environment. Their place of business was on 52nd Street in New York City. The customer would sit for their likeness to be captured on a permanent medium for future viewing. The original commercial photography studio was later moved to Broadway and Chambers Street. Johnson and Wolcott advertised 'Sun Drawn Miniatures' in the New York Sun newspaper and sold the studio pictures for $3 which was the first publication for such an item. The newspaper claimed that it was the first daguerreotype gallery for portraits.

Wolcott's camera design details were taken to London by Johnson's father, William S. Johnson, in February 1840 with the intention of getting an English patent. A European franchise financial arrangement was worked out by him with Richard Beard, a coal merchant and entrepreneur. Johnson himself traveled to London in the fall of 1840 to give technical instructions to Beard, who was setting up a Wolcott reflecting apparatus photographer's studio on top of Royal Polytechnic Institution located on Regent Street. They hired John Frederick Goddard, a chemist and optics technician, to help set up the studio. Beard opened the first public portrait studio of Europe in London in March 1841, the Daguerrean gallery at the Polytechnic Institute. He then developed franchises of portrait studios throughout England using British Patent 8546 that he bought from Johnson for a claimed amount, by historians Bernard and Pauline Heathcote, of (£ in 2020).

Johnson in 1841 received a United States patent right for prepared polished photographic plates ready for permanently holding images titled ''Apparatus for Polishing the Plates Used in Taking Likenesses for Other Objects in Which Such Plates Are Required''. This was the first patented camera that took photographs. He obtained from Beard the patent ownership rights for taking daguerreotype portrait pictures in Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire counties in England. He opened a portrait studio in 1843 next to the Athenaeum museum on Victoria Street in the town of Derby. Johnson in 1844 sold the studio completely to William Akers and sold the English daguerreotype license rights for Derbyshire county to Thomas Roberts, a newsagent.

Chemistry innovations

Goddard created a chemistry formula using iodine monobromide to make the image plate sensitive to light so that an image would develop on it much faster than the daguerreotype cameras of the time. The image plate used iodine chloride