Daguerreotype
It is said that Daguerre has found the means to collect, on a plate prepared by him, the image produced by the camera obscura, in such a way that a portrait, a landscape, or any view, projected upon this plate by the ordinary camera obscura, leaves an imprint in light and shade there, and thus presents the most perfect of all drawings ... a preparation put over this image preserves it for an indefinite time ... the physical sciences have perhaps never presented a marvel comparable to this one.
A further clue to fixing the date of invention of the process is that when the Paris correspondent of the London periodical "The Athenaeum" reported the public announcement of the daguerreotype in 1839, he mentioned that the daguerreotypes now being produced were of considerably better quality than the ones he had seen "four years earlier".
Abraham Bogardus
Abraham Bogardus (November 29, 1822 – March 22, 1908) was an American Daguerreotypist and photographer who made some 200,000 daguerreotypes during his career. 
He was trained in the Daguerreotype process by New Yorker George W. Prosch, who in 1839 had made a camera for Samuel F.B. Morse. Bogardus opened a studio and gallery at 363 Broadway in New York in 1846, becoming very successful. In 1868, he helped in the founding of the National Photographic Association of which he was President for five years. He worked as a clerk in a dry goods store in the late 1830s, and exhibited a painting at the American Institute in 1845.
From 1847 to 1852, he was listed as a Daguerreotypist at 217 Greenwich Street. His residence was in Newark, N.J. from 1849 to 1851, returning to Grove Street, New York City between 1851 and 1852. His success enabled a branch gallery at 126 Washington Street, Newark, N.J. in 1849, which moved to 8 Clinton Street, Newark, N.J. in 1850. His New York City gallery was moved to 229 Greenwich Street in 1851 and the old Root Gallery at 363 Broadway refitted in 1862. He opened a new studio at 1153 Broadway in 1869, maintaining the 363 Broadway address.