took out several patents relating to the process. Although Cutting, the patent holder, had named the process after himself, it appears the term, "ambrotype" itself may have been first coined in the gallery of Marcus Aurelius Root, a well-known daguerreotypist, as documented in his 1864 book The Camera and the Pencil as follows: "After considerable improvements, this process was first introduced, in 1854, into various Daguerrean establishments, in the Eastern and Western States, by Cutting & Rehn. In June of this year, Cutting procured patents for the process, though Langdell had already worked it from the printed formulas. "The process has since been introduced, as a legitimate business, into the leading establishments of our country. The positive branch of it; i.e. a solar impression upon one glass-plate, which is covered by a second hermetically sealed thereto, is entitled the "Ambrotype," (or the "imperishable picture"), a name devised in my gallery. Root also states (pp. 373): "Isaac Rehn, formerly a successful daguerreotypist, in company with Cutting, of Boston, perfected and introduced through the United States the "Ambrotype," or the positive on glass." What isn't mentioned in the referenced book is the particular year in which the term "ambrotype" was first used. Ambrotypes were much less expensive to produce than daguerreotypes, the medium that predominated when they were introduced, and did not have the bright mirror-like metallic surface that could make daguerreotypes troublesome to view and which some people disliked. An ambrotype, however, appeared dull and drab when compared with the brilliance of a well-made and properly viewed daguerreotype. By the late 1850s, the ambrotype was overtaking the daguerreotype in popularity. By the mid-1860s, the ambrotype itself was being replaced by the tintype, a similar image on a sturdy black-lacquered thin iron sheet, as well as by photographic albumen paper prints made from glass plate collodion negatives. Gallery See also Albumen print Calotype Collodion process Daguerreotype Tintype References External links The wetplate collodion process, used to make ambrotypes The Getty Museum: The Wet Collodion Process Step by Step Wet Plate Photography Making a Photograph During the Brady Era Ambrotypes Collection at the American Antiquarian Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1BtdiA1fDs English inventions Photographic processes dating from the 19th century