Richard Beard (photographer)

[1] In 1839, Beard took an interest in the frenzy of public excitement over the first announcements of practical photographic processes by Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot.

Carpmael brokered a meeting between Beard and an American, William S. Johnson who was marketing a photographic camera on behalf of his son, John, and Alexander S. Wolcott, an instrument maker.

[3] The camera performed poorly but Beard grasped the business potential of photography so entered into a commercial agreement with Johnson and Wolcott, secured a patent on the camera and used John Frederick Goddard's publication of the fact that fuming the silver plate with bromine as well as iodine improved sensitivity to light, thereby reducing exposure times.

[6] In 1841, with the assistance of William S. Johnson through instructions of his son (camera inventor), Beard opened England's first professional photography studio at The Polytechnic, Regent Street.

Though he was declared bankrupt in 1849, this seems likely to have been a mere commercial device and there is no evidence that he was impoverished, his son Richard having gradually acquired the running of the business.