Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The World’s First Photographer

French physicist Joseph, Nicéphore Niepce, firt photographer, first photographer in the world
French physicist Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce possibly started his quest to make permanent photos as early as 1816. But his real breakthrough came when he was experimenting with lithography and came across a light-sensitive substance called bitumen of Judaea. Sometime in the mid-1820’s, he put a bitumen-coated pewter plate in a camera obscura facing a window of his estate and exposed it for eight hours. Not even the most inexperienced of today’s amateur photographers would be proud of the blurry picture of a building, a tree, and a barn that resulted, but Niepce had reason to be. His picture was most likely the first permanent photograph ever taken!


first photo, first photo in the world, old photo, 1829 photo

To develop his method further, in 1829, Niepce entered a partnership with a dynamic entrepreneur named Louis Daguerre. In the years following Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre made some important progress. He used silver iodide as a coating on copper plates. This proved to be more light sensitive than bitumen. By accident he found that when he treated the plate with mercury fumes after exposure, a latent picture appeared clearly. This reduced the exposure time dramatically. When Daguerre later discovered that washing the plate with a salt solution prevented the picture from darkening over time, photography was ready to take the world by storm.

3 comments:

Diana Blog said...

You've post very nice info wth nice picture about photography.

Thank you.

Expat in Germany said...

Very interesting. I knew very little about the history of photography until reading this post.

Sanji Akira said...

Hmmmmm its power full article,,,,,

Post a Comment