Photography

 

Niépce

Daguerre

 In 1827, the son of a rich lawyer and one of the many families who had eluded the french revolution created something amazing. An invention that would change the world forever, only to have his glory stolen by a young painter, eager to perfect the works of Nicephore Niépce. In 1829  Niépce shared his secret with Louis Daguerre and the two set off to make world changing discoveries. Meanwhile in England another scientist was working on a creation of his own. William Henry Fox Talbot was trying to make a machine that develop automatic sketches. The creations of these three scientists were crucial in the discovery of negative prints and the entire history of permanent photographic images.
        Nicephore Niépce had been
working for years on the design of a more efficient way to produce permanent photographs. Lithography had risen in popularity in the past decade in his home in france. Niépce noticed how difficult it was to trace pictures and to get the proper tools to create a lasting image. He spent the next years of his life studying ways to create these images automatically. He tried everything . His first idea was to coat pewter (a type of metal) with chemicals and substances that reacted to light. Later incorporating the use of a camera to reflect images, this method called Heliography (sun drawings) created something called superimposed engravings.  Later Niépce experimented with a type of light sensitive asphalt and his camera to create an engraving of the view from his workroom on a piece of glass. This being the first fixed photograph from nature.

A Daguerreotype

Meanwhile Louis Daguerre, a young painter and physicist living near Paris, was working on a similar invention. Daguerre was trying to obtain a method of transferring photographs onto pieces of chemical coated metal and glass. His experiments were very similar to those of Niépce, but none of Daguerre’s had succeeded. In 1829 Niépce shared the details of his secret method with Daguerre and the two joined forces to perfect photography. They worked on the method of Heliography, that  Niépce had invented in 1827, working primarily on shortening the time needed for the photographs to develop and ways to create multiple copies of a single image. Their work continued without prevail until Niépce passed in 1833, leaving behind a life of hard work and debt. Daguerre continued to work on the projects he had began with his late friend. Four years after the passing of his partner, Daguerre produced a method that accomplished all that he had been working on. The daguerreotype had five steps using a silver plate, iodine vapor ( the light sensitive element passed down from the works of Niépce) and the projection of images onto the golden iodized surface. The process could be accomplished in less time than the Heliocentric method and the steps were much easier. The daguerreotype process rose in popularity and Daguerre was honored with great distinction as the inventor of the most efficient process of creating photos, in that time.

  

                                                      
William Fox Talbot                                                                           A Calotype negative

As Daguerre and his invention ruled the world, yet another young scientist was getting his career underway with an incredible invention that would introduce the next era of photography. A graduate of Cambridge university, William Henry Fox Talbot was a 35 year old English scholar. With a good education and strong background, many expected Talbot to continue permanently on his work as a mathematician with several news papers. Instead Talbot went on to create the first negative print on paper. Talbot finished his model in 1835 but took a few years to perfect the method. Although this invention was one of the most advanced of it’s time, the older model created by Daguerre and Niépce created higher quality images, but Talbot’s, Calotype method could produce multiple images from one negative print. Talbot was the first of these inventors to get a patent on his method and publish several of his prints in 1844. This collection of published photographs titled ‘The Pencil of Nature”, was shared around the world and sparked the continued popularity of photography.

Photos and information:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/414651/Nicephore-Niepce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce
http://www.photography-museums.com/home-us.html
http://www.photography.com/articles/history/history-of-photography/
http://www.nndb.com/people/142/000083890/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/fox_talbot_william_henry.shtmlhttp://www.masters-