Before the Civil War, practically all photographs made in the United
States were either daguerreotypes or the imitations of them known as
ambrotypes and tintypes. Superficially they all look alike, but in reality
they are quite different. The daguerreotype was made with a silvered copper
plate, the ambrotype with a glass plate, and the tintype on thin sheets of
iron japanned black. A daguerreotype can instantly be recognized if the
picture looks like an image on a mirror. Indeed, the process
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