| GEO Amazing and Insteresting | | Antique camera auctioned in Austria | Updated at: 1152 PST, Wednesday, June 02, 2010
 VIENNA: One of the world's first commercially produced cameras, a "Giroux Daguerreotype" designed and produced in Paris in 1839, was sold in Vienna for 732,000 euros, according to the Austrian auction house Westlicht Photographica Auction.
It is one of the only cameras by Daguerreotype that still exists and is described as being in excellent original condition, including the lens, the plaque signed by Daguerre himself, the black velvet interior, and the ground-glass screen. There is also a 24-page instruction manual attached to the camera.
The camera was made from a wooden sliding box way back in Paris in September 1830 by Alphone Giroux. It also bears the signature of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre that adds authenticity to it.
It is reported that there are only a few of these cameras that still exist in the world, and most of them are in the possession of public museums. The auctioned camera was owned by a private person, who received it from his father as a gift in the 1970s.
The value of the Giroux was expected to stay between 500,000 and 700,000 euros before the auction. In 2007, the Westlicht auction house once auctioned off a Daguerreotype camera from 1839 for 576,000 euros. |  |
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