(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

John Adams Whipple

Grafton, Massachusetts, 1822 - 1891, Boston, Massachusetts

BiographyBorn 10 September 1822; died 11 April 1891. Whipple moved to Boston in 1840 and began to manufacture photographic chemicals. Soon afterwards he quit lab work and became a portrait photographer. In 1850 he invented the "crystalotype", a process for making paper prints from glass negatives. Whipple was partner with James Wallace Black (1825-1896) from 1856 to 1859 in Boston. Whipple remained at this studio alone until 1874 at which time he abandoned photography and became a publisher of religious books. Whipple had an interest in celestial photography and beginning in 1848 he made daguerreotypes and crystalotypes of the moon and sun, and in 1867 photographed the solar eclipse. Whipple not only manufactured chemicals for daguerreotypists, he made them himself. He also experimented with glass negatives, microphotography, vignetting and the use of artificial light. [Getty ULAN, accessed 7/30/2018, M. Phelps]

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/22/24

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