YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE
The world's first photograph, the one that Joseph Niepce took in 1827, survives to this day. There is a picture of it in just about every book on the history of photography, but it is almost impossible to make out anything that's in it. If there was nota caption next to it identifying the objects in the scene (a courtyard, a pigeon loft, and the roofs of some buildings), you would never be able to guess what they are.
Clearly, Niepce's heliographic process was flawed. For one thing, the light-sensitive medium he used, bitumen of Judea, was very slow to react, which meant that long exposure times were required to take pictures. Very long exposure times: That first picture required an exposure of more than eight hours, during which time the sun moved most of the way across the sky. So did the shadows, obscuring much of the picture's detail.
Additionally, the sloppy way Niepce smeared bitumen of Judea on his metal plates made the resulting image even blotchier and harder to make out than it would have been otherwise.
ENTER DAGUERRE
Niepce could not solve these problems himself, so he joined forces with a Parisian theater owner named Louis Daguerre, who was also experimenting with photography. Daguerre's motivation: he thought that photography, if it were perfected, could be used to create better scenery for the theater.
In 1829 the two men signed an agreement to work together for 10 years, but unfortunately Niepce died from a stroke 4 years into the partnership. Daguerre tried to continue the work with Niepce's son Isidore, but Isidore was convinced that if he contributed anything, Daguerre would take credit for it, so he refused to do any research on his own.
SERENDIPITY
Daguerre soldiered on by himself, and in 1835 made an amazing — and accidental — discovery. One sunny morning, the story goes, Daguerre polished a silvered copper plate and placed it in a box containing iodine. The iodine combined with the silver in the plate to form photosensitive silver iodide, which was a significant improvement over Niepce's bitumen of Judea. Then he loaded the plate into a camera.
That morning he set everything up and started his exposure, which he expected to take several hours... but a half hour later the sun disappeared behind some clouds, ruining everything. Daguerre took the plate out of the camera and tossed it into his chemical cabinet so it would be out of the way.
The following morning, when he took the plate out of the cabinet to polish it for reuse, he saw that it contained a very sharp, detailed image of the picture he had tried to take the day before.
WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
How did the picture get there? Thirty minutes of exposure was nowhere near enough time to create an image. Daguerre guessed that the short exposure had been enough to create a hidden or "latent" image on the plate, and that one of the chemicals in the cabinet must have "developed" it to the point that it was visible to the naked eye. He tested his theory by taking another 30-minute exposure and leaving it in the chemical cabinet overnight, as well.
Sure enough, the following morning there was an image on the plate. By process of elimination, Daguerre discovered that vapors from mercury, stored in the cabinet, had developed his exposures.
Daguerre made another important discovery: Like Wedgwood and Schulze, he wanted to arrest the photosensitive reaction to stop photographic images from being obliterated from further exposure to light. He solved the problem by soaking his developed daguerreotypes, as he called them, in a saltwater bath to create the first permanent photographic images. (Well, almost permanent: the saltwater did not arrest the photosensitive reaction completely, but it did slow it down enough that daguerreotypes could be viewed in daylight and could even be preserved for many years.)
The world's first photograph, the one that Joseph Niepce took in 1827, survives to this day. There is a picture of it in just about every book on the history of photography, but it is almost impossible to make out anything that's in it. If there was nota caption next to it identifying the objects in the scene (a courtyard, a pigeon loft, and the roofs of some buildings), you would never be able to guess what they are.
Clearly, Niepce's heliographic process was flawed. For one thing, the light-sensitive medium he used, bitumen of Judea, was very slow to react, which meant that long exposure times were required to take pictures. Very long exposure times: That first picture required an exposure of more than eight hours, during which time the sun moved most of the way across the sky. So did the shadows, obscuring much of the picture's detail.
Additionally, the sloppy way Niepce smeared bitumen of Judea on his metal plates made the resulting image even blotchier and harder to make out than it would have been otherwise.
ENTER DAGUERRE
Niepce could not solve these problems himself, so he joined forces with a Parisian theater owner named Louis Daguerre, who was also experimenting with photography. Daguerre's motivation: he thought that photography, if it were perfected, could be used to create better scenery for the theater.
In 1829 the two men signed an agreement to work together for 10 years, but unfortunately Niepce died from a stroke 4 years into the partnership. Daguerre tried to continue the work with Niepce's son Isidore, but Isidore was convinced that if he contributed anything, Daguerre would take credit for it, so he refused to do any research on his own.
SERENDIPITY
Daguerre soldiered on by himself, and in 1835 made an amazing — and accidental — discovery. One sunny morning, the story goes, Daguerre polished a silvered copper plate and placed it in a box containing iodine. The iodine combined with the silver in the plate to form photosensitive silver iodide, which was a significant improvement over Niepce's bitumen of Judea. Then he loaded the plate into a camera.
That morning he set everything up and started his exposure, which he expected to take several hours... but a half hour later the sun disappeared behind some clouds, ruining everything. Daguerre took the plate out of the camera and tossed it into his chemical cabinet so it would be out of the way.
The following morning, when he took the plate out of the cabinet to polish it for reuse, he saw that it contained a very sharp, detailed image of the picture he had tried to take the day before.
WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
How did the picture get there? Thirty minutes of exposure was nowhere near enough time to create an image. Daguerre guessed that the short exposure had been enough to create a hidden or "latent" image on the plate, and that one of the chemicals in the cabinet must have "developed" it to the point that it was visible to the naked eye. He tested his theory by taking another 30-minute exposure and leaving it in the chemical cabinet overnight, as well.
Sure enough, the following morning there was an image on the plate. By process of elimination, Daguerre discovered that vapors from mercury, stored in the cabinet, had developed his exposures.
Daguerre made another important discovery: Like Wedgwood and Schulze, he wanted to arrest the photosensitive reaction to stop photographic images from being obliterated from further exposure to light. He solved the problem by soaking his developed daguerreotypes, as he called them, in a saltwater bath to create the first permanent photographic images. (Well, almost permanent: the saltwater did not arrest the photosensitive reaction completely, but it did slow it down enough that daguerreotypes could be viewed in daylight and could even be preserved for many years.)
Next Week ; CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORLD, DAGUERREOTYPE-MANIA
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