One summer day in France in 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a scientifically-minded man living on his country estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography. He took the world's first photograph. It's a photo of some farm buildings that took an exposure time of 8 hours. We are not exactly sure how Niépce did this or what chemicals were used. All that's known is that the photo is on an 8"x 6.5" pewter plate. It's so faint it has to be tilted in order for the light to catch it just right, to see it.

The current theory about how the photograph was taken is that Niépce coated the pewter plate with bitumen, a petroleum derivative sensitive to light. After it spent those 8 hours hardening, he washed the plate with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum. This dissolved the portions of the bitumen that didn't 'see' direct light, so didn't harden. Niépce called his work a "heliograph," in a tribute to the power of the sun.

Portrait of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1795.