Hold the phone! New discovery put back discovery of photography by thirty years!
It’s not often that the Rust breaks a history-shattering story, but today I can bring one to our readers. It’s either that or a case of sloppy research or even ‘fake news’ – I leave you to decide.
Above is a photograph of US journalist Ann Royall, sometimes claimed to be the first American female professional journalist, who is said to have caught the 6th US President John Quincy Adams on the hop when she sat on his clothes whilst he was taking a naked bathe in the Potomac River in the 1820s.
Below is a link to a report by Rebecca English and Unity Blott upon a speech given yesterday by the Duchess of Cornwall as appears today on the website of the Daily Mail.
In it the above photo of Ms Royall appears, third image down, with the tag ‘… an 18th Century American journalist who is said to have forced the then President, John Quincy Adams, to give her an interview about pensions for widows …’
See here – DAILY MAIL
On the face of it this image constitutes an amazing development. Hitherto, despite early experiments in France from the mid-1820s, the generally-accepted date that photography was first brought to the world was 1839 when the daguerreotype became established.
Two points here.
The above photograph of Ann Royall (‘an 18th Century American journalist’) must mean that photography must have been invented in or before 1799.
John Quincy Adams was President of the United States between 1825 and 1829, though he lived on afterwards to 1848.
In fact, of course, the most likely explanation is that the photographs of both Ms Royall and John Quincy Adams were most probably taken at some point between 1939 and 1848.
Furthermore, Ann Royall lived between 1769 and 1854 – which to my mind makes her a 19th Century journalist, not and 18th Century one.
For general information and interest, see here links to Wikipedia entries on ANN ROYALL and JOHN QUINCY ADAMS …
