If anyone is interested, the details of the phyautotype process — the missing link between Niepce's research and Daguerre's final development of the daguerreotype — is fully discussed and illustrated in an article I wrote in the current issue of Photo Techniques magazine.

There is a useful link in the article, or just contact me if you need more info.
chrisnisperos@yahoo.com

The way things are going, I'll buy the mag and read the article just in case there's no other way to make a traditional photograph in a decade or so.

Should be easy to do, John, even a hundred-plus years from now. The sole ingredients are lavender oil, alcohol and white petroleum! Compared to making a daguerreotype, a physautotype is childs-play (even relatively "child-safe").

Ummm.

I wouldn't call that "child-safe" -- it sounds flammable as hell!! White petroleum is either kerosene or naphtha, aka lighter fluid, aka Coleman fuel; both alcohol and lavender oil are flammable as well. Imagine doing this in a darkroom safelit with a candle or kerosene lamp? Eeek! No worse than ether and collodion, though...

Those chems. do sound bit flammable, though with proper precuations, they're certaninly not dangerous, unless, as Donald menitoned, you were working under the old-fashined gaslight, in which case I wouldn't want to be anywhere near them.

This is remarkable safe, at least compared to, say, the Daugerrotype process, as mercury and iodine vapors are really nasty.

Does anyone have a copy of the article that they could link me to, as I have no way of getting a copy of the magazine?