John Adams Whipple
{{Short description|American inventor and photographer (1822–1891)}}
{{about||the settler of Dorchester in the Massachusetts Bay Colony|John Whipple (settler)}}
{{Use American English|date=July 2022}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2024}}
{{Infobox person
| name = John Adams Whipple
| image = John Adams Whipple (Massachusetts Photographer).jpg
| caption = From the August 1851 edition of the Photographic Art-Journal
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1822|09|10}}
| birth_place = Grafton, Massachusetts, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1891|04|10|1822|09|10}}
| death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
| other_names =
| occupation = Photographer, inventor
| known_for = Photographic pioneer
| spouse = {{Marriage|Elizabeth Mann|1847|1891|end=died}}
| children =
| relatives =
}}
Image:DanielWebster ca1847 Whipple 2403624668.jpg by J. A. Whipple, c. 1847]]
John Adams Whipple (September 10, 1822 – April 10, 1891){{Citation | last = Whipple | first = Blaine | title = 15 Generations of Whipples | publisher = Gateway Press | place = Baltimore, Maryland | year = 2007 | volume = 2 | pages = G620–G627 }} was an American inventor and early photographer. He was the first in the United States to manufacture the chemicals used for daguerreotypes. He pioneered astronomical and night photography. He was a prize-winner for his extraordinary early photographs of the moon and he was the first to produce images of stars other than the sun. Among those was the star Vega and the Mizar-Alcor stellar sextuple system,{{Cn|date=July 2022}} which was thought to be a double star until 2009.{{Cite web|url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210092005.htm|title = First known binary star is discovered to be a triplet, quadruplet, quintuplet, sextuplet system}}
Biography
Whipple was born in Grafton, Massachusetts, to Jonathan and Melinda (Grout) Whipple. While a boy he was an ardent student of chemistry, and on the introduction of the daguerreotype process into the United States (1839–1840) he was the first to manufacture the necessary chemicals.
File:View of the Moon by John Adams Whipple 1852.jpg
His health having become impaired through this work, he devoted his attention to photography. He made his first daguerreotype in the winter of 1840, "using a sun-glass for a lens, a candle box for a camera, and the handle of a silver spoon as a substitute for a plate." Over time he became a prominent daguerreotype portraitist in Boston. In addition to making portraits for the Whipple and Black studio, Whipple photographed important buildings in and around Boston, including the house occupied by General George Washington in 1775 and 1776 (photographed circa 1855, now in the Smithsonian).
Whipple married Elizabeth Mann (1819–1891) on May 12, 1847, in Boston.
Image:1848 Whipple daguerreotype BostonDirectory.png
Between 1847 and 1852 Whipple and astronomer William Cranch Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory, used Harvard's Great Refractor telescope to produce images of the moon that are remarkable in their clarity of detail and aesthetic power. This was the largest telescope in the world at that time, and their images of the moon took the prize for technical excellence in photography at the great 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London.{{cite web |last1=Messenheimer |first1=Micah |last2=Natanson |first2=Barbara Orbach |date=July 22, 2021 |title="A step out of and beyond nature": Picturing the Moon |website=Library of Congress Blogs |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2021/07/a-step-out-of-and-beyond-nature-picturing-the-moon/ |access-date=April 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210722162804/https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2021/07/a-step-out-of-and-beyond-nature-picturing-the-moon/ |archive-date=July 22, 2021 |url-status=live |quote=Whipple’s daguerreotypes won a medal for excellence at the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, which lauded their role in starting “a new era in astronomical representation.”}}
On the night of July 16–17, 1850, Whipple and Bond made the first daguerreotype of a star (Vega). In 1863, Whipple used electric lights to take night photographs of Boston Common.
Whipple was as prolific as an inventor as a photographer. He invented crayon daguerreotypes and crystallotypes (daguerreotypes on glass). With his partner or assistant, William Breed Jones,{{Cite web|url=http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Heliography.htm|title=Heliography|website=www.breadandbutterscience.com}} he developed the process for making paper prints from glass albumen negatives (crystallotypes). His American patents include Patent Number 6,056, the "Crayon Daguerreotype"; Patent Number 7,458, the "Crystallotype" (Credit shared with William B. Jones).
Whipple died suddenly, of pneumonia, on April 10, 1891, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was buried at Westborough, Worcester Co., Massachusetts.
Image gallery
Image:Whipple's, on the corner of Washington and Temple, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.jpg|Whipple's studio, corner of Washington and Temple Streets, Boston
Image:MathildeBonaparte 1860s byJAWhipple Harvard.png|Mathilde Bonaparte, c. 1860s
Image:UlyssesSGrant staff ca1865 byJAWhipple Harvard.png|General Ulysses S. Grant (seated at center) and staff: Ely S. Parker, Adam Badeau, Orville E. Babcock, Horace Porter
Image:Girls byJohnAWhipple Boston DaguerreianSociety.jpg|Unidentified girls, 19th century
File:Nathaniel Hawthorne daguerreotype.jpg|Nathaniel Hawthorne, c. 1850–1855
Image:1851 PartialSolarEclipse byJAWhipple Harvard.png|Partial solar eclipse, by Whipple, 1851
Collections of his works
References
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Category:19th-century American inventors
Category:Pioneers of photography
Category:People from Grafton, Massachusetts
Category:19th-century American scientists