1856 | Europe • Great Britain | John Benjamin Dancer applies for a patent for a stereoscopic camera (patent 2064, applied for: 1856-09-05, granted: 1857-02-27), allowing both images to be taken at the same time. Sets of stereographs quickly become popular. |
1856 | North America • Canada | William Notman commences his stereographic photographs of the city of Montreal. |
1856 | North America • USA
| Neff's Patent for Melainotype plates. (19 February 1856) |
1857 | Europe • Great Britain | Photography by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake is published in the London Quarterly Review. |
1857 | Europe • Great Britain
| Queen Victoria purchases the allegorical photomontage The Two Ways of Life by Oscar Gustave Rejlander at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. [Read about] |
1857 | North America • USA
| Alexander Beckers of New York City patents a stereo-viewer with a revolving mechanism which allows multiple views of different types to be inspected sequentially by turning a knob. (7 April 1857) |
1858 | Europe • France
| Nadar takes the first aerial photograph from a balloon over Paris. |
1858 | North America • USA | William & Frederick Langenheim publish their American Stereographic Views. |
1858 | Europe • Great Britain
| The first book illustrated with original stereographs is published in London. The book by the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth is Teneriffe, an Astronomer's experiment: or, specialities of a residence above the clouds. |
1859 | Europe • France | On Photography, a section of Charles Baudelaire’s review of the annual Salon, fiercely condemns the medium. |
1859 | Europe • UK | patents the first Panoramic Camera, appropriately called "The Sutton". The camera was at first produced by F. Cox and later by Thomas Ross (London). Thomas Sutton |
1859 | Europe • France | A group of artists and photographers, including Eugène Delacroix, Francis Wey and Gustave Le Gray succeed in getting photography included in the 1859 Paris Salon but the photography section has a separate entrance. |
1859 | North America • USA
| Oliver Wendell Holmes lauds “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph” in The Atlantic Monthly. He is the first to use the term stereograph. |
1859 | North America • USA | Blondin crosses the Niagara Falls on a tightrope and is photographed by William England for the London Stereoscopic Co. The stereocard becomes the most popular they ever published selling over 100,000 copies. |
1859 | Europe • France | Emperor Napoleon III of France departing for the Austro-Sardinian War in Italy with his army stops at the studio of André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri to have his portrait taken. Although Disderi had the patent for carte-de-visite from 1854 this incident creates the publicity for a craze for photographic visiting cards that sweeps across the world. Whilst this makes for a good story that is often repeated subsequent research indicates that it is probably false. (May 1859) |
1860 | North America • Mexico | Désiré Charnay publishes Album fotografico Mexicano with twenty five photographs detailing his studies of Mayan ruins. |
1860 | Europe • Great Britain
| John Jabez Edwin Mayall takes portraits of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children which encourages the collecting of photographic cards of celebrities. (May 1860) |
1860 | North America • USA
| James Wallace Black took an aerial photograph of Boston, MA, USA. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert O. Dougan Collection, Gift of Warner Communications Inc., 1981 (1981.1229.4) (13 October 1860) |
1861 | Europe • Italian states
| Eugène Sevaistre uses a stereoscopic camera to obtain a faster exposure during the siege of Gaeta (near Naples) during the war between the King of Naples, Francesco II Borbone and the Kingdom of Sardinia. |
1861 | North America • USA | The earliest two patent applications for a photo album in the US were by F.R. Grumel, Geneva, Switzerland on May 14 1861 followed by H.T. Anthony (of E. & H.T. Anthony) and Frank Phoebus with another application for an album on May 28th 1861. (14 May 1861) |