Have you ever sat down in your home and looked at everything around you and thought, “Who invented that?” From playing cards to toothpicks, even something as simple as your toothbrush was invented by someone at some point in time.
Take photography for example! Do you realize how crazy of an invention that is.Capturing a moment in time, a memory, using technology just sounds unattainable. I mean, you’re grabbing a screenshot of real time and framing it onto your wall. Doesn’t that just sound wild? Well, who was the guy that invented this?
What was the First Photo Ever?
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor and is usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photo engraved printing plate in 1825. He used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene.
Niépce captured the scene with a camera obscura focused on a pewter plate thinly coated with Bitument of Jedea, a naturally occurring asphalt. The bitumen hardened in the brightly lit areas, but in the dimly lit areas it remained soluble.
A very long exposure in the camera was required to take the first image. Sunlight strikes the building on opposite sides, suggesting an exposure that lasted about 8 hours, which has become the traditional estimate.
Still sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Thank you, Mr. Niépce, for the amazing invention. I mean, look how far we have come today!
Now, we can take photos easily with our phones, cameras and polaroids. To make sure your photos can last forever, be sure to digitize them! Those photos can fade over time, and we want you to keep those precious moments intact. I think Mr. Niépce would agree. Digitize those memories!
