Background
Frederick Langenheim was born on May 5, 1809, in Braunschweig, Germany.
Frederick Langenheim was born on May 5, 1809, in Braunschweig, Germany.
Having emigrated from Germany, Frederick and his brother William, along with another German, G. F. Schreiber, opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia in the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter they enlisted and fought in the Mexican War.
In 1842-1843 Langenheim and his brother introduced the Petzval-Voigtlander lens to the United States. They were the first to introduce glass transparencies for the projection (usually known as lantern slides) in 1846.
In 1849, for HOOO, they purchased from Fox Talbot the U.S. rights to his calotype process. In that same year, they produced stereoscopic slides on glass or paper based on Niepce de Saint-Victor's albumen process, calling them "hyalotypes."
The brothers established the American Stereoscopic Company, which became a major producer of stereoviews; they sold it to E. & H. T. Anthony & Company in 1861.