Photography (heliography)

What it is

The first permanent image captured with a camera obscura, on a pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea, with an eight-hour exposure ('View from the Window at Le Gras'). It demonstrated that light could fix an image without the hand's intervention.

Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy obtained unfixed images around 1802; Hercule Florence claimed a 'photographie' in Brazil (1833). Niépce went into partnership with Daguerre in 1829 and died in 1833.

What it led to

• The daguerreotype and the calotype
• Portraiture accessible to the middle classes
• Scientific, police and war documentation
• Debate on art and mechanical reproduction

Built on

• Camera obscura (Alhazen)c. 1021
• Lithography1796-1798
• Light sensitivity of silver salts (Schulze, 1727; Wedgwood, 1802)

Made possible

• Hércules Florence's photography1832-1833
• Daguerreotype1839
• Bayard's direct positive paper process1839-1840
• Calotype and negative-positive process1835-1841
• Cyanotype1842
• Halftone printing with a cross-line screen1881-1882
• Lippmann plate1891
• X-ray diffraction (crystallography)1912–1913

Links

Sources✓ verified 2026-09-25

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce