It takes mere seconds for us to capture a moment in time with our phones. But the history of photography took painstakingly long to reach this point. One of the few surviving early photographs is the “View from the Window at Le Gras” which was taken by Joseph Nicephore Niépce in 1826.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
It underwent a process called heliography, taken from the words helios, meaning ‘sun’ and graphein, meaning ‘writing’, as it involved capturing an image with the use of light.
This process involved placing a plate inside a camera obscura, which will then develop the image projected through a small hole. It took hours, if not days, of exposure for the image to set. With the help of Louis Daguerre, Niépce contributed greatly to the development of photography.
Unfortunately, Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued improving the process of heliography and incorporating it into the camera obscura design until he was able to develop the daguerreotype. And as the story goes, Daguerre patented and sold the process to the French government in exchange for a lifetime pension, not just for himself, but also for Niépce’s son, Isidore. The rest is history.
(Image credit: Jonnychiwa/Wikimedia Commons)
Source: neatorama