The early years of the nineteenth century saw the invention and development of photography. The first processes and photographic materials were clumsy and insensitive but a few determined individuals tried their best to record images of astronomical bodies. J. W. Draper, of New York, is usually credited as the first to achieve significant success in photographing the Moon. In the Scientific Memoirs of 1840 he writes:

A decade later J. A. Whipple, also in the USA, succeeded in producing a series of Daguerreotypes of the Moon at various lunar phases. The English amateur Warren de la Rue achieved better results shortly after, as did Lewis Rutherfurd in America. By the close of the nineteenth century the quality of the photographs obtained had improved to the point that the first photographic atlases of the Moon could be compiled.

For example, W. H. Pickering published a complete photographic atlas of the Moon in 1904. The plates were taken at the focus of a specially constructed 12-inch (305 mm) objective.