World’s first photo

In 1839 , Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a gentleman obssesed with science, living on his country estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography a non-existant art at that time. Fascinated with the new art of lithography that arrived in France in 1813, he began experimenting in 1816. Niépce first placed engravings, made transparent, on engraving stones and glass plates coated with a light-sensitive varnish of his own composition. These experiments, together with his application of the then-popular optical instrument, the camera obscura, would eventually lead him to the invention of the art.

In the summer of1826, Niépce looked on the window of his upper-story workroom at his Saint-Loup-de-Varennes country house, Le Gras, he set up a camera obscura, placed within it a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (an asphalt derivative of petroleum), and uncapped the lens. After an exposure that took almost eight hours, the plate was removed and the latent image of the view from the window was rendered visible by washing it with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum which dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which had not been hardened by light. The result was the permanent direct positive picture you see , a view of the outbuildings, courtyard, trees and landscape as seen from that upstairs window and ultimatley the world’s first photo: “View from the Window at Le Gras ” by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.

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