Photography was the first available demonstration that light could indeed exert an action sufficient to cause changes in material bodies.

I do not claim to have perfected an art but to have commenced one, the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.

One advantage of the discovery of the Photographic Art will be, that it will enable us to introduce into our pictures a multitude of minute details which add to the truth and reality of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to faithfully copy from nature.