One of the first researchers to produce photographic images using silver halide chemistry was Schultze. As early as 1727, he formed metallic silver images by first reacting solutions of silver nitrate and white chalk and then exposing these solutions to light through stencils. Schultze's work was improved upon through the efforts of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre who, in 1837, developed a process for printing images on a silver coated copper plate. This type of printed image, called a daguerreotype in honor of its primary inventor, is made by polishing and cleaning a silver-coated copper plate and then reacting the silver coating with iodine vapors to form light-sensitive silver iodide. The silver iodide coated plate is then exposed to light through the optics of a camera that projects and focuses an image on the plate. In the ensuing reaction, the silver ions are reduced to silver metal. Finally, the plate is treated with mercury to produce an amalgam. In this type of print, the areas of the plate exposed to light appear white and the unexposed areas remain dark. The problem with this method was that it required long exposure times because the intensity of the image depends solely on the strength of the light forming the image.

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