page_title: History of photography
section_title: 1816 to 1833: Niépce's earliest fixed images
hierarchical_section_title: History of photography / 1816 to 1833: Niépce's earliest fixed images
caption_attribution_description: English&#x3a;&#32; The oldest heliographic engraving known in the world. It is a reproduction of a 17th century Flemish engraving, showing a man leading a horse. It was made by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce in 1825, with an heliography technical process. The Bibliothèque nationale de France bought it for €450,000 in 2002, deeming it as a "national treasure".Français&#x202f;&#x3a;&#32; La plus ancienne gravure héliographique connue au monde. Il s'agit de la reproduction d'une gravure flamande du 17e siècle, montrant un homme menant un cheval. Elle a été obtenue par l'inventeur Français Nicéphore Niépce en 1825, suivant le procédé de l'héliographie. En 2002, la Bibliothèque nationale de France l'a acquise pour 450&#160;000 €, considérant qu'il s'agissait d'un «&#160;trésor national&#160;».Русский&#x3a;&#32; Старейшая гелиографическая гравюра, известная в мире. Это воспроизведение фламандской гравюры 17 века, показывающая человека, ведущего лошадь. Она была сделана французским изобретателем Нисефором Ньепсом в 1825 году.தமிழ்&#x3a;&#32; உலகின் மிகப் பழைய ஒளிப்படம். 1825 ஆம் ஆண்டில் நியேப்சுவினால் எடுக்கப்பட்டதாகக் கருதப்படுகிறது. இது ஒரு ஓவியத்தின் படம் ஆகும்.
context_page_description: The history of photography began in remote antiquity with the discovery of two critical principles: camera obscura image projection and the observation that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to the 18th century.
  Around 1717, Johann Heinrich Schulze captured cut-out letters on a bottle of a light-sensitive slurry, but he apparently never thought of making the results durable. Around 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms, but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images.
  In the mid-1820s, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process.
context_section_description: In 1816, Nicéphore Niépce, using paper coated with silver chloride, succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives, darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light-fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing. Disenchanted with silver salts, he turned his attention to light-sensitive organic substances.
  The oldest surviving photograph of the image formed in a camera was created by Niépce in 1826 or 1827. It was made on a polished sheet of pewter and the light-sensitive substance was a thin coating of bitumen, a naturally occurring petroleum tar, which was dissolved in lavender oil, applied to the surface of the pewter and allowed to dry before use. After a very long exposure in the camera (traditionally said to be eight hours, but now believed to be several days), the bitumen was sufficiently hardened in proportion to its exposure to light that the unhardened part could be removed with a solvent, leaving a positive image with the light areas represented by hardened bitumen and the dark areas by bare pewter. To see the image plainly, the plate had to be lit and viewed in such a way that the bare metal appeared dark and the bitumen relatively light.
  In partnership, Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and Louis Daguerre in Paris refined the bitumen process, substituting a more sensitive resin and a very different post-exposure treatment that yielded higher-quality and more easily viewed images. Exposure times in the camera, although substantially reduced, were still measured in hours.
caption: The earliest known surviving heliographic engraving, made in 1825. It was printed from a metal plate made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with his "heliographic process".[23] The plate was exposed under an ordinary engraving and copied it by photographic means. This was a step towards the first permanent photograph from nature taken with a camera obscura.
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