WILLIAM BELL. "To Make a Daguerreotype," and Receipt for Rouge, c. 1900. Two 12.5x8" manuscript pages, and one 7.9x5" manuscript page.

Very nice handwritten Daguerreotype "instruction manual" and a receipt for powder to make rouge by one of America's earliest and most accomplished photographers.

To Make a Daguerreotype / By Wm Bell
Take a copper plate that has had sheets of silver hammered into it, rub it with a solution of nitric acid, alcohol and water with a piece [wad] of cotton [2 drops nitric / 5 oz (?) alcohol / 1 oz (?) water] until all hammer marks are gone. Then you will find the marks of the cotton left which had been used in a circular motion, this must be gotten rid of by polishing it in this manner, put plate in a clamp - have a block of wood covered with a chamois skin put on this skin equal quantities of rouge powder [first] and [?] plumbago [afterwards on the ?] then polish the plate over this, until it looks like a mirror. Then to make it more perfect, dip [or hang on a copper wire] for to a thin coating of silver for about 4 minutes into a galvanizing solution of chloride of silver and cyanide of potassium. Then polish again over the the [sic] rouge chamois.
Now have a box with crystals of sodium in a saucer, pass your plate over this several times until a yellow color appears - not too long or it will be purple and spoiled, then pass over a box of bromine [?] fumes - which is made with air slacked lime powder, and liquid bromide mixed well together. After one or two passes over these fumes the plate should be a light purple. Up to this time all has been done in the daylight. Now to kill any action of this daylight, this plate must be passed once again (in a dark room with yellow light) over the iodide fumes - now we have a sensitive plate, practically a yellow screen, which will take about 30 seconds exposure. Now to make it more sensitive, pour over this plate a coating of alcohol and dry over heat. (not flame for fear of fire) Expose in camera from about one second up.
To develop have an alcohol lamp under a tray of liquid mercury brought to a heating point to throw off fumes - have a piramid [sic] funnel over this dish - to set the plate on like this, in a few seconds a picture will appear. Now take a pair of pinchers to hold it with, coat over it a solution of hyposulfite of soda then wash off under running water. When dry, coat over it a solution of chloride of gold. It is finished.

Receipt for Rouge
Proto sulphate of Brom [?] (crystals) - exposed to air until it turns to a white powder all green gone. Then in a fire crucible bring that to a red heat. Called oxidizing [?] it will be converted into a red powder. / Daniels battery [?]

William H. Bell (1830-1910) was an English-born American photographer known for his photographs of western landscapes taken as part of the Wheeler expedition in 1872. In his later years, he wrote articles on the dry plate process and other techniques for various photography journals.

In 1848 William Bell began working in his brother-in-law John Keenan in his Daguerreotpye studio. His career spanned six decades, and Bell worked in nearly every major early photographic process, including daguerreotype, collodion processes, albumen prints, stereo cards, and early film. He was considered a pioneer of the dry plate and lantern slide processes, and experimented with night photography, using magnesium wire for lighting. He wrote technical articles on topics such as gelatine emulsions, the use of pyrogallic acid to recover gold from waste solutions, and the development of isochromatic plates. His nephew as the famous Philadelphia photographer William Rau.

For his Wheeler Survey photographs, Bell used two cameras - an 11-inch (280 mm) x 8-inch (200 mm) for large prints, and an 8-inch (200 mm) x 5-inch (130 mm) for stereo cards. He used both wet and dry collodion processes on this expedition, and his photographs are characterized by dark foregrounds with elements becoming increasingly lighter in tone as distance increases. Landmarks photographed by Bell include the Grand Canyon, the Marble Canyon, the Paria River, Mount Nebo, and the early Mormon settlement of Mona, Utah.

Bell's work was exhibited at the Vienna Universal Exposition and the Louisville Industrial Exposition in 1873, and at the Centennial Exposition in 1876. His photographs are now included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Health and Medicine, the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division, and the George Eastman House.

Credit: https://monovisions.com/william-bell-biography-19th-century-landscape-photographer/

Very good. Minor wear.