To Warren de la Rue belongs the honour of having obtained the earliest results of substantial value in celestial photography. What had been done previously was interesting in the way of promise, but much could not be claimed for it as actual performance. Some "pioneering experiments" were made by Dr. J. W. Draper of New York in 1840, resulting in the production of a few "moon-pictures" one inch in diameter;[446] but slight encouragement was derived from them, either to himself or others. Bond of Cambridge (U.S.), however, secured in 1850 with the Harvard 15-inch refractor that daguerreotype of the moon with which the career of extra-terrestrial photography may be said to have formally opened. It was shown in London at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and determined the direction of De la Rue's efforts. Yet it did little more than prove the art to be a possible one. Warren de la Rue was born in Guernsey in 1815, and died in London April 19, 1889. Educated at the École Sainte-Barbe in Paris, he made a large fortune as a paper manufacturer in England, and thus amply and early provided the material supplies for his scientific campaign. Towards the end of 1853 he took some successful lunar photographs. They were remarkable as the first examples of the application to astronomical light-painting of the collodion process, invented by Archer in 1851; and also of the use of reflectors (De la Rue's was one of thirteen inches, constructed by himself) for that kind of work. The absence of a driving apparatus was, however, very sensibly felt; the difficulty of moving the instrument by hand so as accurately to follow the moon's apparent motion being such as to cause the discontinuance of the experiments until 1857, when the want was supplied. De la Rue's new observatory, built in that year at Cranford, was expressly dedicated to celestial photography; and there he applied to the heavenly bodies the stereoscopic method of obtaining relief, and turned his attention to the delicate business of photographing the sun.