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From 1830 to 1850, Philadelphia's scientific, artistic, and literary communities experienced unprecedented synergy. Scientific societies founded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, such as the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Franklin Institute, reached a stage of broad expansion. Medical science and education ballooned, and magazines, newspapers, and publishers were proliferating. The circle of the educated elite in Philadelphia was large enough to exhibit wide professional diversity, yet small enough to allow frequent associations among its members, whether scientists, artists, or both. We propose that a daguerreotype that has appeared since 1937 in several articles, often without attribution, was taken Paul Beck Goddard in the winter of 1842-43 in the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia's recently constructed building at the corner of Broad and Sansom Streets. Goddard had announced as early as 1842 that he made daguerreotypes by the diffused light of a room. The daguerreotype studied here is America's earliest existing attempt to photograph a complex interior scene using natural lighting with human subjects. Our evidence suggests that Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Leidy are in the photo. The final man's identification remains speculative: Samuel G. Morton, John K. Mitchell or James C. Booth. The earliest daguerreotype of its kind tells us much about the development of photography 1842-43. The picture also illustrates Philadelphia's synergistic linking of the scientific and the artistic creative impulse. The history of the Academy during a determinative period is reflected in the daguerreotype images: place, people, specimens, and science.
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