In 1853, long before it became commonplace for tourists to
make snapshots of one another standing in front of Saint Peter’s, the Eiffel Tower,
or the Parthenon, Platt Babbitt set up business in an open-air pavilion at the prime
viewing point on the American side of Niagara Falls (now called Prospect
Point). His impressive daguerreotypes—magically precise one-of-a-kind
photographic images on silver-plated sheets of copper—allowed visitors to take
home not only a view of the spectacular falls and a memory of the misty air and
roaring sound, but also the undeniable proof that they had stood at its very
edge.