He was a key player in the controversy over Levi Hill's claim to have invented a process for producing color daguerreotypes.

[3] Although Davie was almost entirely self-taught,[5] his professional reputation developed rapidly, and in 1850 he traveled to Washington, DC, where he photographed nearly every member of both houses of Congress along with other public figures.

An innovator in photographic technology, he is credited with such inventions and improvements as the plate vise, the buffing lathe, a camera stand, and refined rotten stone.

[3] Around the same time, Davie took on a partner in Utica, Gordon Evans with whom he published the monthly periodical Scientific Daguerreian of which no known copies survive.

[9] Davie was elected first president of the Association of Daguerreotypists in 1851, and in that capacity he oversaw a team of three experts investigating the Reverend Levi Hill's claimed invention of a process called "heliochromy" that could supposedly produce color daguerreotypes.