I esteem it but the natural carrying out of the wonderful discovery, and that the credit was, after all, due to Daguerre. I lay no claim to any improvements."
An American gentleman, @James M. @Wattles Esq., as early as 1828 (about the same date of M. Niepce's discovery) became attracted by the subject of photography, or as he termed it "Solar picture drawing," while taking landscape views by means of the camera-obscura. When we take into account all the circumstances connected with his experiments, the great disadvantages under which he labored, and his extreme youthfulness, we cannot help but feel amazed. Here was a mere boy, surrounded by the deepest forests, hundred of miles from the populous portion of our country, without the necessary materials or resources for procuring them; yet by the force of his natural genius he not only made a discovery, but he put it into practical use, as well. In essence, he accomplished what the most learned philosophers of @Europe, with every experimental apparatus and a profound knowledge of chemistry, spent years of toil to accomplish. But all discoveries need encouragement. How much more latent talent may still be there, untapped, because of the same reason that kept Mr. Wattles from publicly revealing his discoveries in the first place -- ridicule!
At the time when the idea of taking pictures permanently on paper by means of the camera-obscura first occurred to him, he was only sixteen years old and under the instructions of Mr. @Charles Le @Seuer, (a talented artist from Paris) at the New @Harmony school in @Indiana.
Drawing and painting were natural talents, and he was frequently employed by the professors to make landscape sketches in the manner mentioned. The beauty of the image of these landscapes produced on the paper in the camera-obscura, made him stop and admire them with all the ardor of a young artist, and he wished that, by some means, he could fix them there in all their beauty.
