John William Draper

John William Draper was a scientist and first president of the American Chemical Society. He is notable for making an early daguerreotype of the Moon in 1840.

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1840-03-16: John William Draper took what in the 2020s was believed to be the first daguerreotype photograph of the Moon.^[1]

I learned Draper made a daguerreotype of the Moon in 1840, more than a decade before the popular display at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

↑ “Moon”. (n.d.). The Met. Accessed 2023-04-15. Archived from the original on 2020-10-17. “Draper, a physician and professor of chemistry at New York University, was the first to produce a successful daguerreotype of the moon. On March 16, 1840, he wrote in his laboratory notebook, "This evening I exposed a prepared plate to the moonbeams which had been conveyed by a double convex lens." In this plate, a halo-like vignette encircles the image of the moon, creating a crescent shape that evokes the lunar phases. Despite his accomplishment, Draper’s efforts received only modest recognition from his contemporaries; until recently his lunar daguerreotypes were believed to be lost.”