1865 | North America • USA
| Lewis Powell (aka Payne), David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt are executed at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and attempting to assassinate Secretary of State Seward. Alexander Gardner documented the execution his photographs were published as wood engravings in Harper's Weekly on 22 July 1865. (7 July 1865) |
1865 | North America • USA
| Wood engravings of the execution of the Lincoln conspirators published in Harper's Weekly. The photographs of Alexander Gardner taken on the day of the execution, 7 July 1865, were the basis for the illustrations. (22 July 1865) |
1865 | Africa • Egypt
| Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) takes the first photographs of the interior of the Great Pyramid. |
1866 | Europe • Great Britain
| The Cabinet Card (5 1/2 x 4 inches) becomes popular in Great Britain but spreads rapidly around the world. Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | Europe • Scotland
| Thomas Annan (1829-1887) is commissioned to record alleys and dismal slums for the Glasgow Improvement Trust and these are published in The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow (1878) Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | Europe • Great Britain
| The Woodburytype process is patented. Walter Bentley Woodbury of Kingston-on-Thames showed specimens of his Patent Photo-Relief Process to the Photographic Society of Scotland (10 February 1866) Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | North America • USA
| Alexander Gardner uses his own plates and the works of other photographers to publish Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War which contains 100 tipped in albumen prints divided into two volumes. It is the most important photographic work on the American Civil War. Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1868 | North America • USA
| Carleton E. Watkins photographs the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake that ruptured the Hayward fault at 7:53 AM local time. (21 October 1868) |
1868 | North America • USA
| Alexander Gardner completes Union Pacific Railroad portfolio, Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad and it is among the first of the major landscape photographic studies of the American west. |
1868 | Asia • China
| John Thomson begins work on his magnum opus Illustrations of China and its People. The book, illustrated by Woodbury-type reproductions from his original photographs, is published four volumes in 1873-74 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle) |
1869 | North America • USA
| The golden spike is driven at Promontory Point, Utah Territory, linking the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads. This completes the construction of the first Transcontinental railway in North America and the ceremony is photographed by Andrew J. Russell , Alfred Hart and Charles Roscoe Savage. (10 May 1869) |
1869 | Europe • France | The first issue of Revue Photographique des Hopitaux de Paris appears. Edited by Dr. A. de Montmeja, a Parisian ophthalmologist and pioneering medical photographer, it is the first medical journal to contain photographs. [Read about] |
1869 | Europe • France | Louis Ducos du Hauron publishes Les Couleurs en Photographie, Solution du Probleme that proposes the subtractive color process. |
1870 | North America • USA | Henry R. Heyl of Philadelphia patents the Magic lantern projector. |
1871 | North America • USA
| 1st Lt. Geo.M. Wheeler of the War Department Corp. of Engineers leads the Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian with Timothy H. O'Sullivan as the photographer. |
1872 | Europe • France | Louis Ducos du Hauron takes the first color photograph showing the town of Angouleme in France. |
1872 | North America • USA
| Alexander Gardner photographs a delegation of Sioux Native Americans to Washington DC headed by Red Cloud. (May 1872) Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1874 | North America • USA
| Cassius M. Coolidge, noted for paints of dogs playing poker, issued a patent for "Processes of Taking Photographic Pictures" (US Patent No: 149,724). The patents is for the use of comic foregrounds which are the forerunner of the comic boards with holes that people can place their heads through for a candid shot becoming part of life-size caricature. (14 April 1874) |