[Niagara Falls]

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 D. 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.