First photograph

Nicéphore Niépce made the oldest surviving camera photograph around 1826 to 1827. It took hours of exposure on a pewter plate.

Context

Niépce made the image with a process he called heliography, 'sun writing'. He coated a pewter plate with bitumen, a tar-like substance that hardens when exposed to light, and put it in a camera obscura pointing out of an upstairs window of his family home in Burgundy. The unhardened bitumen was washed away afterward, leaving a faint picture of rooftops and buildings.

The exposure was long, usually described as at least several hours and possibly much longer, which is why sunlight appears on both sides of the buildings in the picture. The date is uncertain: it is placed around 1826 or 1827 by different historians, so the figure is given as 'c. 1826'.

The plate was lost to the public for decades and was rediscovered in the 20th century. It is now held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. It is the earliest surviving photograph made in a camera, although Niépce made earlier experiments, and other inventors, such as Daguerre, later developed much faster processes.Today's scholars also study the plate with modern imaging to understand how the image formed, and they handle it very carefully because the bitumen layer is fragile.