On this day (January 20) in the year 1853, the following article appeared in the "Salem Register" (Mass; Vol.LVI., No.6.): ---------------------------------------------------------- NEW USES FOR THE DAGUERREOTYPE. The Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune thus alludes to new uses to which the daguerreotype is applied: "The German papers told us some weeks ago that the stations of railroads in Prussia and Austria were furnished with apparatus for taking a daguerreotype sketch of the appearances offered by any railroad accident immediately after is occurrence. A broken bridge, smashed cars, killed passenger--in fine, the accurate likeness of a disaster, the portrait of an accident, will be given to the life, and serve as evidence in after investigations of its cause. The Swiss police authorities take the likeness of rogues and vagabonds, when they catch them. But a French daguerreotypist has discovered new processes which enable them to seize more fugitive subjects than these. The very bird flying in the air is taken on the wing, and the form is caught on the created wave.--This sounds like exaggeration, but the proofs hang visible in the passage Jouffray, Boulevard des Italiens. I regret that I cannot recall at the instant the artist's name. It is said that the government proposes to use his process in a Daguerreotype Coast Survey. (from which a series not of charts, but of pictures of a dangerous coast, as seen from sea, can be drawn and placed in the hands of navigators. While on this topic I will mention another application of Daguerre's discovery which has not perhaps come into use in New York. A large placard in white, red and black, posted on the walls here set forth the merits of a certain journal, and offers to each new subscriber for a year a portrait of himself and two friends." (original grammar maintained.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 01-20-96