On this day, (April 23) in the year 1853, the following notice appeared in the New York Tribune (Weekly): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW WAY TO MAKE MIRRORS, --- The Prattsville Advocate states that on a recent visit to Rev. L.L. Hill, the alleged inventor of daguerreotypes colored by the action of light, Mr. Hill showed him a new way of making mirrors. He says: "Mr. Hill took a small glass, such as Daguerreians use for covering their pictures, and in forty seconds it was transformed into a perfect mirror--perfect in every respect. We kept an eye upon it the whole time; the process was fully explained, and the result cannot be excelled. In his mode of 'silvering glass; there is not a particle of the usual amalgam of tin foil and quicksilver, but it is composed wholly of pure and unadulterated silver. The discovery was made while he was experimenting on glass, with a view of adopting it to Helio-chromy, never dreaming of its beautiful application to the manufacture of mirrors. The expense of manufacturing mirrors, by this new durable method, will not, we think, exceed half the cost of manufacturing the kind now used; besides, they are always perfect, and no art of man can deface them, without breaking them to pieces. We hazard nothing in prediction that it will create an entire revolution in the art of making mirror, and that in a few years, at most, there will not be a mirror, of the kind now used, to be found in the country. ------------------------* more *---- Also on the same day appeared the following in the "Illustrated News" (New York) of 1853: ------------------------- "STAT MAGNI MONIMIS UNBRA," ejaculated Prof.----, of Columbia College (as his eye caught the exquisite likeness of Barnum, at ROOT'S GALLERY, No. 363 BROADWAY.) "A shadow indeed, but what a perfect miniature of the great showman; how life-like and exact in every feature." And the same remark is true of hundreds of pictures taken by ROOT in any sort of weather. Come and see. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 04-23-95