A photo fit for a prince
QUESTION Who was the first celebrity to be photographed?
View From The window At Le Gras, taken by the French inventor Nicephore Niepce in 1827, is the world’s oldest known photograph.
The earliest photo of people was of a street shoeshiner and his customer in a shot of Boulevard du Temple, taken in 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the French photographic pioneer.
A daguerreotype was an early type of photograph using iodine-sensitised silvered plate and mercury vapour.
American photographer Robert Cornelius is considered to have taken the first self-portrait in 1839.
if we are to equate royalty with celebrity, then the first household name to be photographed was Prince Albert. The Royal Collection has a portrait dating from 1842 by an unknown photographer.
The earliest photograph of Queen Victoria, a double portrait with the Princess Royal, was taken by miniature painter Henry Collen in 1844.
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were patrons of the more traditional arts, but also encouraged photography.
william edward Kilburn became Her Majesty’s daguerreotypist in 1846. He took photos of the Royal Family for six years. Aristocrats and members of high society sat for and bought his work, which was finely hand-coloured.
in 1848, he took a full-length photo of soprano Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, after a recital at windsor Castle.
John Quincy Adams was the first U.S. president to be photographed, though he wasn’t in office at the time.
A daguerreotype by Philip Haas was taken at Adams’s home in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1843, 14 years after he left office.
The first celebrity photographer was Felix Nadar, the pseudonym of GaspardFelix Tournachon, a French photographer, journalist, novelist and balloonist.
He took his earliest photographs in 1853 and pioneered the use of artificial lighting when working in the catacombs of Paris. Nadar was expert in capturing the essence of his subjects, who included the great and good of French society.
His most celebrated portrait is of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, taken in 1864, which was said to have captured precisely ‘the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture’.
Charles Freedman, Brighton, E. Sussex.
QUESTION When and by whom was Latin used as a day-to-day language?
LATiN never died — it simply changed. By the time of the sack of Rome in AD 476, there were two well-established forms: High or classical Latin and Vulgar Latin, which was the language of everyday speech.
even by the first century AD, these forms were used for different occasions. Pontius Pilate would have referred to his horse as caballus to his men, but as equus to Rome.
High Latin was the language of the aristocracy and Vulgar Latin that of the commoners, many of whom were illiterate.
There was little interaction between these social groups and they evolved in social isolation.
The fall of Rome precipitated the fragmentation of the empire, which allowed dialects to develop.
in the Middle Ages, forms of Vulgar Latin became known as lingua Romana — the language of the Romans — which developed into the Romance languages of Spanish, French, Portuguese, italian and Romanian.
Lingua Sarda, the native tongue of the italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia that is still in use, has a close resemblance to fifth-century Vulgar Latin.
High Latin remained as the language of civilisation, used by scholars, clergymen and diplomats.
Mark Swanson, High Wycombe, Bucks.
QUESTION How were new canals filled with water?
eVeRy time a canal lock is opened, up to 31,000 gallons of water are released. with locks being opened several times a day, the demand for water to maintain the level of the canal is high. So filling a new canal for the first time would seem like an even greater challenge.
Unlike a river, a canal doesn’t have a natural source of water, such as the runoff from hills, an underground spring or a lake. instead, a water source has to be provided.
when canals were surveyed, the builders also sought out natural sources of water such as ponds or lakes. These were then converted into reservoirs connected to the canal by a man-made watercourse.
in some cases, water was diverted into canals from nearby rivers. Flow is controlled by valves that were originally manually operated, but are now controlled remotely.
if no natural source could be found, a reservoir was built ahead of the canal, so that as each section was completed, it could be filled. That meant the water level in the reservoir had time to be restored naturally while the next section of canal was being dug.
The Coventry to Oxford canal was started in 1769, but didn’t reach the university town until 1790. it is relatively short at 78 miles, but has 43 locks.
Boddington reservoir in Northamptonshire, which feeds the canal, is popular with fishermen, home to a sailing club and provides habitat for a wide range of water birds and wildlife.
Diverting water from natural flows into new reservoirs could have an adverse effect on some rivers during the driest months of the year.
The River Cherwell, which runs close to the Coventry to Oxford canal for much of its route from Banbury to Oxford, is a minor waterway compared to its neighbour, which is topped up by reservoirs.
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