The first permanent photograph (later accidentally destroyed) was an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. His photographs were produced on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea, which he then dissolved in white petroleum. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light. The unhardened material may then be washed away and the metal plate polished, rendering a positive image with light regions of hardened bitumen and dark regions of bare pewter. Niépce then began experimenting with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1727 that silver nitrate (AgNO3) darkens when exposed to light. [via Wikipedia]
Nicéphore Niépce’s earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature, circa 1826, “View from the Window at Le Gras,” Saint-Loup-de-Varennes (France). |
Before the recent discovery of the Cornelius photo, this was the oldest known photograph portrait, made by Dr. Joseph Draper of New York in 1840. The subject is his sister, Anna Katherine Draper. |
A calotype print showing the American photographer Frederick Langenheim (circa 1849). Note, the caption on the photo calls the process Talbotype |
Roger Fenton’s assistant seated on Fenton’s photographic van, Crimea, 1855 |
General view of The Crystal Palace at Sydenham by Philip Henry Delamotte |
First color image, photograph by James Clerk Maxwell, 1861 |