Friday 2nd January

Today in 1839:

"French artist, Louis Daguerre, took the first photograph of the Moon"

Louis Daguerre

The problem with my daily desk calendar is this: it's hard to verify the 'facts'. Where do they come from? How do I know that this stuff is real? I've struggled to find a version of this photo online, and the only confirmation of today being the actual day on which Daguerre took his daguerreotype photo of the moon is from all the other 'on this day in history' websites out there. As Goebbels is quoted to have said, "Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes truth". With the Internet belching consensus at roughly a Marillion bytes per second, perhaps the same now goes for inaccuracy?

Anyway, the following things seem certain:

• Louis Daguerre was a French artist and chemist and was born in 1787 (thanks, wikipedia!)
• Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype method of photography, in which the image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor (yeah thanks again, wikipedia).
• Louis Daguerre has a crater on the moon named after him, an asteroid, and a street in Paris.
  

Here's a video of the daguerreotype process, brought to you by the shared efforts of both YouTube and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art:



The Quote:

"It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep"

The other problem with the daily dek calendar is that none of the quotes are attributed. One might arrive at work, rip the last date greedily from its holding, and really enjoy an inspirational, motivational quote, without ever realizing who said it first. Without knowing, it could be from a murderer! Or worse!

Anyway, light googling reveals this Tibetan Proverb. It must be said, you've done well if you can do either in your lifetime.