John Plumbe Jr.
An early practitioner of daguerreotypes, John Plumbe Jr. established the first franchised daguerreian galleries in the United States, with branches in more than fourteen major cities. His international exploits included galleries in Paris, France and Liverpool, England.
Plumbe learned the art of daguerreotypy in June, 1840, in Washington, D.C. By May of 1841, he was listed as a professor of photography at the U.S. Photographic Institute in Boston. Plumbe made many technical improvements with daguerreotypes and created the “Plumbe System”. By 1847 Plumbe was fiscally overextended and forced into bankruptcy, eventually committing suicide, but he is still known to have made daguerreotypes through 1848.