The first photographic print is credited to Nicephore Niepce in France around 1827, but it was not turned into a viable commercial process until Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre expanded on Niepce's experiments to produce a durable negative image on a polished metal plate in 1839. Termed daguerreotypes, these small portraits were housed under glass in small cases to protect the fragile image surface and became popular across Europe. Daguerreotypes were in common production in the United States by the mid-1840s.

The invention of the collodion emulsion process by Frederick Scott Archer in 1848 created a cheaper alterative to daguerreotypes. A collodion negative on glass placed over a dark backing to render it positive was called an ambrotype. Ambrotypes became popular in the 1850s and gradually replaced the daguerreotypes as a means of portraiture.

Developed in the late 1850s, a collodion negative on a thin sheet of steel known as a tintype in turn replaced the ambrotype because of its affordability and flexibility. While the tintype was also sometimes housed in a case, its lightness and durability allowed it to be housed in a paper sleeve and could be mailed to friends and family. While the popularity of tintypes held on into the early 1900s, one-of-a-kind cased photographs were entirely replaced by the technology of glass or plastic negatives and paper prints in the twentieth century.

Source:

Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. 4th ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 2007.