Following Arago’s report to the Chamber: “A few hours later, optitians’ shops were besieged; there were not enough lenses, not enough camera obscuras to satisfy the zeal of so many eager amateurs. They watched with regretful eye the setting sun on the horizon, as it carried away the raw material of the experiment. But on the morrow, during the first hours of the day, a great number of these experimenters could be seen at their windows, striving with all sorts of anxious precautions, to capture on a prepared plate the image of a dormer-window opposite, or the view of a group of chimneys.”

— Louis Figuier, La Photographie: Exposition et histoire des principales découvertes scientifiques modernes (Paris, 1851); cited, without page reference, by Gisela Freund (manuscript, p. 46). [Y4,1]

— Benjamin, Walter. “Y [Photography].” The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999. 677. Print.