Abner Doubleday
San Francisco: Edouart & Cobb, c1870. Presumed to be one of multiple copies made. Photograph. The format is approximately 2.125 inches by 3.5 in mounted on a card sized 2.25 inches by 3.754 inches). The front image has some fading but is of an officer in uniform. This appears to be signed at the top back by Maj. Gen. Doubleday and at the bottom by Abner Doubleday. Inspection of examples of his signatures on the internet support the believe that these signatures are authentic. As his name does not appear on the front photograph, it was not uncommon for carte de visites to be signed by the depicted person on the back. Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and Union major general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men. In San Francisco, after the war, he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. In his final years in New Jersey, he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society. In 1908, Doubleday was declared by the Mills Commission to have invented the game of baseball. He was stationed in San Francisco from 1869 through 1871 and he took out a patent for the cable car railway that still runs there, receiving a charter for its operation, but signed away his rights when he was reassigned. He is more widely known as the supposed inventor of the game of baseball, in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. The studio of Edouart & Cobb, located at No. 504 Kearny Street, in San Francisco, California. They were reported to have been in business between 1860 and 1880. The carte de visite, abbreviated CdV, was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero. Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. The carte de visite was usually made of an albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 mm (2.125 in) × 89 mm (3.5 in) mounted on a card sized 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in). In 1854, Disdéri had also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate, which reduced production costs. The carte de visite was slow to gain widespread use until 1859, when Disdéri published Emperor Napoleon III's photos in this format. This made the format an overnight success. The new invention was so popular that its usage became known as "cardomania" and spread quickly throughout Europe and then to America and the rest of the world. By the early 1870s, cartes de visite were supplanted by "cabinet cards", which were also usually albumen prints, but larger, mounted on cardboard backs measuring 110 mm (4.5 in) by 170 mm (6.5 in). The carte de visite photograph proved to be a very popular item during the American Civil War. Soldiers, friends and family members would have a means of inexpensively obtaining photographs and sending them to loved ones in small envelopes. Photos of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and other celebrities of the era became instant hits in the North. People were not only buying photographs of themselves, but also collecting photographs of celebrities. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Abner Doubleday, Carte de Visit, Baseball, Cable Car, Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, Portrait, Photograph
[Book #83162]
Price: $5,000.00