John Adams Whipple (September 10, 1822 – April 10, 1891)[1] was an American inventor and early photographer.

While a boy he was an ardent student of chemistry, and on the introduction of the daguerreotype process into the United States (1839–1840) he was the first to manufacture the necessary chemicals.

He made his first daguerreotype in the winter of 1840, "using a sun-glass for a lens, a candle box for a camera, and the handle of a silver spoon as a substitute for a plate."

This was the largest telescope in the world at that time, and their images of the moon took the prize for technical excellence in photography at the great 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London.

With his partner or assistant, William Breed Jones,[5] he developed the process for making paper prints from glass albumen negatives (crystallotypes).