Celebrating the 175th Anniversary of Photography!

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, born at Chalon-sur-Saône in 1765, shared a passion for research with his brother Claude in which they kept corresponding with each other about their experiences, and it’s thanks to this exchange of letters that we know about the work of Niépce.

 From 1816, Niépce became interested in lithography and conducted many trials. He discovered that Judean pitch has the property of hardening in the light; while exposing a translucent drawing on a plate coated in this substance, he succeeded in obtaining a picture. He christened this process heliography. Niépce went on to expose these same plates in a darkened camera and thereby succeeded in obtaining the first photograph which took him a day to expose.

Louis Daguerre used the camera obscura a lot and frequently went to Chevalier the opticians, where he heard about Niépce, with whom he started to work with. In parallel with their joint research, Daguerre discovered that silver iodide changes quickly in the light. He placed a plate coated with silver in a box containing iodine crystals, whose vapours formed silver iodide on the plate’s surface. After its exposure in the camera, the picture, still not yet visible on the plate, was revealed by the vapours given off by the mercury, heated to a certain temperature, this created the Daguerrotype process!