Daguerreotype
Morse met the inventor of the daguerreotype, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, in Paris in January 1839 when Daguerre's invention was announced [2]. While the daguerreotype fascinated Morse, he was concerned about how the new invention would compete with his telegraph. However, Morse's viewing of the daguerreotype alleviated his fears when he saw how revolutionary its technology was. Morse wrote a letter to his brother Sidney describing Daguerre's invention, which Sidney then published in the New-York Observer on April 20, 1839. While this was not the first report of the daguerreotype to appear in America, it was the first in-person report to appear in the United States.
John Jabez Edwin Mayall
In the 1840s, the daguerreotype portrait had virtually supplanted the hand-painted portrait miniature. Some critics complained that the daguerreotype portrait on a metal plate was cold and harsh and lacked the finesse and charm of the small-scale painted portrait. In March 1842, Richard Beard had patented a method of colouring daguerreotype pictures. The following month a newspaper reported that "Mr Beard has now discovered the means of colouring the plates after the photographic drawing is completed, thus giving the warmth and truth of a miniature painting." It is known that Mayall used a similar method of hand-colouring daguerreotype portraits while based in Philadelphia. When two journalists visited Mayall's new premises in London's Regent Street in 1853, they observed the work of the "colouring room" in which "two damsels were busily at work" adding colour to Mayall's daguerreotype portraits.