Susse Frères

The French firm Susse Frères manufactured a daguerreotype camera which was one of the first two photographic cameras ever sold to the public. The company was also engaged in the foundry business and owned a large foundry in Paris.

On the 19th of August 1839, François Arago publicly unveiled the previously secret details of the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced photographic process. Two months earlier, on the 22nd of June 1839, its inventor Louis Daguerre had signed contracts with two manufacturers, Alphonse Giroux and Maison Susse Frères, Place de la Bourse 31, Paris, to produce the first commercially available photographic cameras. The two companies were granted exclusive rights to make and sell the special camera obscura designed by Daguerre, as well as the several lesser items of equipment needed to work the process.

The only known surviving Susse Frères daguerreotype camera, made in 1839, is on display in the permanent camera museum of the WestLicht auction house in Vienna, Austria.

According to expert Michael Auer, the camera's lens was made by optician Charles Chevalier and its brass mount is hand-engraved "No3" and "III", indicating that it is only the third lens Chevalier made for a daguerreotype camera. In the 19th century, it was common for makers to serially number their lenses. The glass lens itself is an 81 mm diameter meniscus achromatic doublet, concave surface foremost, and has a focal length of 382 mm. The front of the brass lens barrel features a diaphragm with a fixed 27 mm diameter opening, giving the lens an effective working aperture of slightly over f/14. Attached to the diaphragm is a manually operated pivoting brass shutter, sufficient for its purpose because of the very long exposures required.

The camera, constructed according to Daguerre's specifications, was designed for making 8.5x6.5 inch (216x167 mm) "whole plate" daguerreotypes and optimized for photographing landscapes. No claim was made that either the camera or the daguerreotype process itself, in its then-current state of development, was suitable for portraiture.

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