Dry collodion plate camera, c 1860.

An early sliding box type dry collodion plate camera, with a lens made by the London Stereoscopic Co. Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) invented the wet collodion proces that replaced the calotype and daguerreotype proceses. Popular from around 1855, it was the first photographic proces that produced finely detailed negatives, of which more than one copy could be made, and for this reason is widely considered one of the most important developments in photograpy. The gelatin dry collodion proces was its replacement and was the forerunner of today's photographic film procesing.