He was a nineteenth-century pioneer photographer and inventor. He made with John Johnson the world's first commercial photography portrait studio and patented the first US camera that made photographs.

In 1839 he became an associated with Johnson, a jeweler and watchmaker's assistant. Johnson took to Wolcott on October 6, 1839, a copy of the specifications on Daguerre's method of capturing a likeness of a person and storing on a permanent plate that would hold the picture indefinitely. They made a camera that day based on Daguerre's method and started experimenting with it.

Wolcott improved on Daguerre's lens camera by making a camera that used a mirror instead. On October 7, 1839, Wolcott made the first portrait in the world with a prototype of his daguerreotype camera when he took a picture of his partner Johnson.Wolcott patented it on May 8, 1840. It became known as "Wolcott's camera" and referred to as the "mirror camera." It was the first US patent in photography

According to wikipedia