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Charles Louis Chevalier (born Paris, Apr 19th 1804, died Paris, Nov 2th 1859) was an optician and instrument maker. He was son of the optician Vincent Jacques Louis Chevalier who himself was son of an optician, Louis Vincent Chevalier who had founded the family's company in Paris in 1765. The company of Vincent and Charles Chevalier was famous for the achromatic lenses which were invented by father Vincent, and the lens/prism optics they both had invented for camera obscuras. In 1825, the cousin of Nicéphore Niépce came to the Chevaliers to buy achromatic lenses for his experimental cameras. He told the Chevaliers about his cousin's first efforts to achieve persisting photographs. That was when Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre just got interested in similar experiments. Later Chevalier gave him the address of Niépce, the first step for Daguerre to become a photography inventor himself. In 1832 Charles founded his own company.

Charles chevalier 1862

Charles Chevalier

In 1839 it made the achromatic meniscus lenses for the first photographic cameras (Le Daguerreotype) that Alphonse Giroux made after the construction plan of Daguerre. In 1840 Chevalier made the first kind of folding camera, the Le Photographe, a whole-plate box camera that was collapsible to parcel size. Chevalier developed a new doublet lens for cameras, with focal lens 29cm and aperture f/5.6, six times faster than the lenses he had made for the first daguerreotype cameras. In 1841 he reunited with father Vincent Chevalier's company. Together they and later Charles' son Louis Marie Arthur Chevalier successfully produced microscopes, glasses and other optical instruments.


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