Question

Pick one early innovator/inventor or artist who played a role in the invention of photography and research him/her and please write post sharing what you learned about this early photographic pioneer. Please refer to specific examples that relate to your early photographic pioneer.

Answer 1

We are going to talk about Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, of photography and also a pioneer in that field.

So, Niépce was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire on 7th March 1765. His father was a wealthy lawyer. Niépce had 2 brothers and 1 sister.

Military career:

He served as a staff officer in French army under Napolean Bonaparte for several years but was dismissed due to ill health. After that he got married and became the administrator of district of Nice.But in 1795, he resigned from that post and started pursuing research with his elder brother Claude.

Research:

In 1807, Niépce brothers invented an internal combustion engine and named it "Pyrelophore".The word was derived from combination of some Greek words like, 'fire', 'wind' and 'I produce'.Pyrelophore initially used lycopodium powder for fuel and the brothers claimed to have used the engine to power a boat.

Photography/ Heliography:

In 1813, lithography became a fashionable hobby in France, so Niépce began experimenting with the then-novel printing technique.But he was unskilled in drawing and was not able to obtain proper lithographic stone, so what he did was he coated pewter with various light-sensitive substances so that he can copy superimposed engravings in sunlight. Then, in 1816, he progressed his attempts towards photography with a camera, which he called heliography (sundrawing). He record a view from the window of his room on a paper which was sensitized with silver chloride but through this activity he was able to fix the image only partially.

After that he tried light sensitive material of bitumen of Judea which hardens on exposure to light and using this material he succeeded in obtaining a photographic copy of an engraving superimposed on glass in 1822.Then, in 1826-27, he made a view from his workroom on a pewter plate using a camera and this was the 1st permanently fixed image from nature.In 1826, he produced another heliograph which was a reproduction of an engraved potrait. With this, he not only solved the problem of reproducing nature by light but also invented the 1st photomechanical reproduction process. In 1827, during his visit to England, he addressed a memorandum on his invention to the Royal Society but insisted to keep the method secret.

He was unable to reduce the very long exposure times by either optical or chemical means, so he entered into a partnership with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who was a Persian painter.Daguerre was looking for a means of creating permanent photograhic images with a camera. Together, they developed physautotype, which was an improved process that used oil distillate as the photosensitive substance.The partnership lasted upto death of Niépce in 1833. After that also, Daguerre continued experimenting and figured out a process that superficially resembled Niépce's. He named it "daguerreoty". In 1839, he managed to get the government of France to purchase his invention to which the government agreed too.