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the first permanent picture
French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce uses a camera obscura to burn a permanent image of the countryside at his estate onto a chemical-coated pewter plate. The black-and-white exposure takes eight hours and fades significantly, but an image is still visible on the plate today. -
the first picture of a person
In early 1839, French painter and chemist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre photographs a Paris street scene from his apartment window using a camera obscura and his newly invented daguerreotype process. The long exposure time means moving objects like pedestrians and carriages don't appear in the photo. But an unidentified man who stops for a shoeshine remains still long enough to unwittingly become the first person ever photographed. -
First Photo of Lightning
in 1847, early photography pioneer Thomas Easterly makes a daguerreotype of a bolt of lightning—the first picture to capture the natural phenomenon. Primarily a portraitist, Easterly also makes pictures of landscapes, unusual for daguerreotypists. -
First Photos of War
In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, daguerreotypist Charles J. Betts follows the American Army to Veracruz, Mexico, and, according to an advertisement, offers to photograph "the dead and wounded." Dozens of anonymous daguerreotypes are also taken of troop movements and American officers. The first official war photos, though, are of the Crimean War from 1855 to 1856. The British government sends several photographers to document the war, but because of his meticulous preparations, Roger Fe -
1858: First Bird's-Eye View
Felix Tournachon, better known by the nom de plume Nadar, combines his interests— aeronautics, journalism, and photography— and becomes the first to capture an aerial photograph in a tethered balloon over Paris in 1858. -
the first coloured photo
The enormously influential Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell creates a rudimentary color image by superimposing onto a single screen three black-and-white images each passed through three filters—red, green, and blue. His photo of a multicolored ribbon is the first to prove the efficacy of the three-color method, until then just a theory, and sets the stage for further color innovation, particularly by the Lumißre brothers in France. -
First Underwater Color Photo
Ichthyologist William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin use an Autochrome camera and a raft full of explosive magnesium flash powder to illuminate the shallows of Florida's Dry Tortugas and make the first undersea color photographs. The photos, which show reef scenes with fish, are published in the January 1927 National Geographic. -
First Photo Taken From Space
Researchers with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory strap a 35-millimeter camera to a German V-2 missile and launch it into space from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The camera snaps a picture every second and a half as the rocket ascends to 65 miles (105 kilometers) above the surface. The camera falls back to Earth and slams into the ground, but the film, contained in a steel cassette, is unharmed. The developed photos are the first ever to show Earth from space, -
ocean eye invented
Frustrated by the inability to shoot wide-angle photos using currently available underwater housings, National Geographic photographer Bates Littlehales works with the National Geographic photo lab and the Photogrammetry Corporation to design a better model. The result, essentially a transparent Plexiglas bubble with a set of handles and controls, revolutionizes underwater photography. Dubbed OceanEye, the new housing can accommodate a camera with a bulky motor drive as well as a wide range of l -
First Digital Still Camera
odak releases the first commercially available, professional digital camera in 1991. This device, extremely expensive and marketed to professional photographers, uses a Nikon F-3 camera body fitted with a digital sensor. Over the next five years, several companies come out with more affordable models, and today, the market is overwhelmed with thousands of digital still camera models.
