Nicephore NiŽpce

NiŽpce (pronounced Nee-ps) is universally credited with producing the first successful photograph in June/July 1827. He was fascinated with lithography, and worked on this process. Unable to draw, he needed the help of his artist son to make the images. However, when in 1814 his son was drafted into the army to fight at Waterloo, he was left having to look for another way of obtaining images. Eventually he succeeded, calling his product Heliographs (after the Greek "of the sun").

 

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre

b. 18 November 1787; d. 10 July 1851 Daguerre (pronounced Dagair) was perhaps the most famous of several people who invented photography. He regularly used a camera obscura as an aid to painting in perspective, and this had led him to seek to freeze the image. In 1826 he learned of the work of Nicephore NiŽpce, and on 4 January 1829 signed up a partnership with him. The partnership was a short one, NiŽpce dying in 1833, but Daguerre continued to experiment. He made an important discovery by accident. In 1835, so the story goes, he put an exposed plate in his chemical cupboard, and some days later found, to his surprise, that the latent image had developed. Daguerre eventually concluded that this was due to the presence of mercury vapour from a broken thermometer. This important discovery that a latent image could be developed made it possible to reduce the exposure time from some eight hours to thirty minutes. Though he now knew how to produce an image, it was not until 1837 that he was able to fix them. This new process he called a Daguerreotype.

Portrait of Daguerre

Frederick Scott Archer

b. 1813; d. 2 May 1857 Scott Archer's development of the wet collodion process changed the face of photography, enabling the making of finely detailed negatives. Until then the two processes in existence were the daguerreotype and the calotype, both of which had limitations:

• Daguerreotypes, though they had very clear images, required lengthy exposures and it was a "once-only" process;

• Calotypes, though capable of unlimited reproduction, were not as sharp, as one had to print through paper.

  Archer's procedure was to mix collodion with potassium iodide, and then immerse this in a solution of silver nitrate. Both the exposure and the development had to be made in the camera whilst the plate was still wet. This new process was an important one, not only for its clarity (using glass as a base) but also because it reduced the exposure times to a matter of seconds.

Henry Fox Talbot

Fox Talbot was not the first to produce photographs, he made a major contribution to the photographic process as we know it today by developing the paper negative. September 1840 Fox Talbot discovered the phenomenon of the latent image. It is said that this was a chance discovery, when he attempted to re-sensitise some paper which had failed to work in previous experiments; as the chemical was applied, an image, previously invisible, began to appear. This was a major breakthrough which led to drastically lowered exposure times - from one hour or so to 1-3 minutes. Talbot called the improved version the calotype (from the Greek "Kalos", meaning beautiful)

Also see http://www.foxtalbot.arts.gla.ac.uk/

The earliest surviving paper negative is of the Oriel window in the South Gallery at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, where he lived. It is dated August 1835. Talbot's comments read "When first made, the squares of glass about 200 in number could be counted, with help of a lens."