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First attempt to capture an image
Around the year 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura by means of a light-sensitive substance. -
Sun pictures
Thomas Wedgwood makes "sun pictures" by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate; resulting images deteriorated rapidly, however, if displayed under light stronger than from candles. -
Combinations with the camera
Nicéphore Niépce combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper -
First succeded photograph
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. -
First known surviving photo
Called View from the Window at Le Gras, the oldest surviving permanent 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. -
The daguerreotype is born
The daguerreotype was the first publicly announced photographic process, and for nearly twenty years, it was the one most commonly used. It was invented by Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839. -
Daguerre makes the first practical photography
On 7 January 1839, this first complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences. Complete instructions were published on 19 August 1839. -
John Herschel made the first glass negative
In 1839, John Herschel made the first glass negative, but his process was difficult to reproduce. -
First color photograph
James Clerk Maxwell presents a projected additive color image of a multicolored ribbon, the first demonstration of color photography by the three-color method he suggested in 1855 -
High speed photograph is born
PhotographsEadweard Muybridge uses a row of cameras with trip-wires to make a high-speed photographic analysis of a galloping horse. Each picture is taken in less than the two-thousandth part of a second, and they are taken in sufficiently rapid sequence (about 25 per second) -
First Kodak camera
First Kodak camera, containing a 20-foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5-inch diameter circular pictures. "You press the button, we do the rest"
