Ambrotype

During the 1860s it was superseded by the tintype, a similar photograph on thin black-lacquered iron, hard to distinguish from an ambrotype if under glass.

One side of a clean glass plate was coated with a thin layer of iodized collodion, then dipped in a silver nitrate solution.

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:[3] "After considerable improvements, this process was first introduced, in 1854, into various Daguerrean establishments, in the Eastern and Western States, by Cutting & Rehn.

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."

[4] 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.

Many ambrotypes were made by unknown photographers, such as this American example of a Union soldier (Sgt. Samuel Smith, 119th USCT [ 1 ] ) with his family, c. 1863 –65. Because of their fragility, ambrotypes were usually kept in folding cases like those used for daguerreotypes . This example is framed for display.