Read to Believe : World's First Photograph !!

Photography today, to all of us, seems like just a process by which we capture images using our Nikon or Sony digital cameras. But has anyone ever given a slight thought upon that how a click on the camera results in the recording of a priceless moment of our life, which we would like to look back to many a times.

This process of capturing images came into knowledge of people in mid 1800s when Louis Daugerre announced his invention of the daguerreotype process that fixed optical images permanently. But the actual effort of producing the first ever piece of a recorded image was done by a Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.

This man who had a scientific bend of mind was very much fascinated by the art of lithography which swept the whole of France in 1813. He began his experiments in early 1816 with glass plates coated with a light sensitive medium which was again his own composition. He made use of these experiments as well as the 'camera obscura' which was well known at that time for this new invention which could record images forever.

In the year 1924, Niépce was somewhat successful in copying engravings utilizing pewter plates as the support medium for the process.

How was the worlds first photograph taken :

• In the summers of 1826, Niépce was finally ready to do the never done before task of recording an image with the help of pewter plate and Bitumen of Judea( an asphalt derivativeof petroleum).
  
  
• In the window of his workroom, he set up camera obscura which had a 8"x6.5" pewter plate coated with Bitumen.
  
  
• He removed the lens cover to give a day long exposure of eight hours.
  
  
• After exposure, the pewter plate was removed.
  
  
• On washing the plate with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, the bitumen which was hardened by light was dissolved away and it showed the image of the view outside the window on it. the photograph witnessed buildings, coutyard, trees and landscape as seen from that window.
  
  
• Niépce named this first ever photograph 'heloigraph' meaning sun-drawing.
  
  
• The most amazing part as we see about this photograph was that, it produced image without using any negative, as we use today.

World's First Photograph Shot In 1826

AMAZING FACTS RELATED TO THE 'HELIOGRAPH'

1. The 'heliograph' is kept sealed in an air tight case within an inert atmosphere at the University of Texas because of its unique significance in the world of photography. It had been there on display sice 1964.

2. In March 1952, first attempt was made to reproduce the 'heliograph'. It was done at Helmut Gernsheim's request by the Research Laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company in Harrow, England. After three weeks of work, the lab produced this copyprint.

First Reproduction Of The Heliograph In 1952

Gernsheim declared this version of the 'heliograph' to be a "gross distortion of the original" and forbade its reproduction to the world until 1977.

3. On March 20th 1952, Gernsheim produced the most famous reproduction of the 'heliograph' based upon its previous reproduction. He himself spent eleven hours on touching up with watercolors one of the prints of the Kodak reproduction. He wanted it to look exactly like how Niépce wanted the photograph to be like. This was the accepted reproduction of 'The World's First Picture' for the next fifty years.

Second Reproduction Of The Heliograph In 1952

4. In 2003, the Getty Museum in California did two weeks of tests on the 'heliograph' in a joint project involving the Rochester Institute of Technology and France's Centre de Recherches sur la Conservation des Documents Graphiques (try saying that three times fast). Then it went back on display at the University of Texas.