360Niépce takes the oldest surviving photograph from nature
Around 1826 or 1827, the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce captured the view from an upstairs window of his house in Burgundy on a metal plate coated with bitumen. The exposure took many hours, perhaps days. It is the oldest surviving camera photograph. His partner Louis Daguerre developed a faster process, announced to the world in 1839.
People had long used the camera obscura, a dark box or room with a small hole that projects an image, to trace scenes by hand. The challenge was to make the image permanent.
Nicéphore Niépce experimented with light-sensitive materials. He coated a pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, a kind of asphalt that hardens in light, and placed it in a camera at a window of his estate at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes.
After a very long exposure, he washed away the unhardened bitumen, leaving a faint image of rooftops and buildings. Known as 'View from the Window at Le Gras', it is the oldest surviving photograph taken with a camera.
Niépce died in 1833. His partner Louis Daguerre developed a much faster process, the daguerreotype, which France gave to the world in 1839. The original plate is kept at the University of Texas at Austin.
- c. 1826–1827
- Niépce's view from the window
- 1829
- Niépce and Daguerre become partners
- 1839
- The daguerreotype is announced
Sources: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas · Britannica.