The invention of photography and earliest photograph of people
In 1827, Nicéphore Niépce captured the first ever recorded photograph, however, this is not considered to be the invention of photography. The process Niépce used to capture the photograph, heliography, was not only expensive, but also impractical as each photograph took eight hours to days of exposure time.
The Daguerreotype
In 1829, Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a fellow French artist and inventor. They worked to improve the process of photography, with Daguerre focusing on the camera and Niépce focusing on the chemical process. The new processes, called the Physautotype, was in improvement over the heliography process as the exposure time required was lowered to eight hours. After Niépce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued to work on the process. It is thought he had come up with an improved process in 1835, however, chose not to announce it widely as he wanted to understand how he could exploit his new process, known as the Daguerreotype.
In 1839, he announced the invention of the Daguerreotype, a photograph created on a sheet of copper with a thin layer of silver, which is sensitized with iodine and exposed in a camera to create a direct positive image. The image is then developed by exposing it to mercury vapor and fixed with a…
