The photographic camera below was made by John Millington, the first professor of natural philosophy at the University of Mississippi, 1848-1853. It was used for the daguerreotype process, revealed by the Frenchman, L.J.M. Daguerre early in 1839. It is now in the University Museum in Oxford.

This is an "American-style" camera, with chamfered edges on the lens-board at the left, and a slot, where the dark-slide holding the sensitized plate was inserted, on the right side on top. The lens is missing, something that one might expect of an early optical device left unused for a length of time in a busy physics department! The original lens was certainly lacking a shutter; the long exposures were timed by uncapping and capping the lens.

The camera to the left is designed to take pictures inside the mouth on plates about 2 cm square. Either the ground-glass focussing screen or the plate holder is placed in the left-hand side of the wooden camera body. On the extension on the right-hand side is a mirror and the holder for a small flash bulb. This unique piece of apparatus is in the Greenslade Collection.