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Gallery
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The First Photograph
One summer day in France in 1826, Joseph
Nicéphore Niépce, a scientifically-minded man living on his country estate near
Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography. He took the
world's first photograph. It's a photo of some farm buildings that took an
exposure time of 8 hours. We are not exactly sure how Niépce did this or what
chemicals were used. All that's known is that the photo is on an 8"x 6.5" pewter
plate. It's so faint it has to be tilted in order for the light to catch it just
right, to see it.
The current theory about how the photograph was
taken is that Niépce coated the pewter plate with bitumen, a petroleum
derivative sensitive to light. After it spent those 8 hours hardening, he washed
the plate with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum. This dissolved
the portions of the bitumen that didn't 'see' direct light, so didn't harden.
Niépce called his work a "heliograph," in a tribute to the power of the sun.
Portrait of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1795.
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