At a time in history when millions of images per second are being taken around the world, perhaps it is a good time to stop and think a little and look back. What better than wondering what was the first photo in history. You know which is?
If you want to find out, keep reading. I tell you this and much more.
FIRST PHOTO EVER
The first surviving photo in history is from 1826 and is entitled Point de vue du Gras (View from Le Gras).
The inventor of the photograph took it from the window of his house (now converted into a museum) after eight hours of exposure. It is preserved at the University of Texas at Austin.
Actually this is the first photo of the most official story , since there are two others that are competing for the position of first photograph. One is a reproduction of a Dutch engraving dating from 1825, sold two decades ago for a whopping half a million euros for being the first photo in history and the other is "The table set" that Roland Barthes, in his work The camera lucida , concludes that it is from 1822.
Year up, year down, what is clear is that they are all the work of the same author, the one that we can consider to be the inventor of photography.
Then…
WHO WAS THE INVENTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY?
The inventor of photography is the Frenchman Josep-Nicéphore Niépce . Before this first (official) photograph, around 1824 he took other photographs that have not survived although they are known from the correspondence he had with his brother. In addition to the other two that I just mentioned above from 1822 and 1825.
WHEN WAS PHOTOGRAPHY INVENTED?
This leads us to wonder when photography was actually invented.
The first photographic or heliographic procedure dates from 1824 , by Niépce . These images were obtained by placing lithographic stones covered with Judean bitumen at the bottom of a camera obscura, spread on a silver plate. In this way, he obtained the first everlasting image of a landscape. The main drawback is that too long an exposure time was needed, several days in full sun.
Starting in 1825, he regularly used copper as a support. Later, in the year 1826, tin, making engraved images.
But we must look back a little further, in 1816, when the world's first (unfixed) negative was created , an image of nature that Niépce himself took from his window and that fades as the paper blackens with the light.
FIRST PHOTOGRAPH IN HISTORY WITH PEOPLE
The extremely long exposure times needed to achieve these first images made it impossible for people to appear in them.
It is not until 1839 when Daguerre gets the first photograph in which people appear. In reality, two people, a shoeshine boy and his client, can be seen in the lower left corner. The rest of the pedestrians disappear from the scene because the exposure time, much shorter, was still somewhat slow, around 10 minutes. Quite an advance.
FIRST FAKE PHOTO IN HISTORY
As a curiosity, you may want to know that the first montage of the story is from 1840 and is entitled "Self-portrait of a drowned man" where its author, Hippolyte Bayard , posed as dead.
His goal was to protest the lack of support from the French government for his invention of direct print on paper.
FIRST COLOR PHOTO EVER
Tartan Ribbon is what the first color photo in history is called and was taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton, following the instructions of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell . For this they used three negatives with green, red and blue filters that were projected at the same time to obtain a single image.
This is how the first permanent color photo was born and this three-color system was called trichomy.
However, the first color film came in 1935, Kodakchrome, from Kodak.
FIRST UNDERWATER PHOTO IN HISTORY
Incredible as it may seem, the first photograph taken underwater is from 1893. The person in charge, the biologist Louis Boutanthat he did not cease in his efforts until, with the help of his engineer brother, he achieved his purpose.
FIRST DIGITAL PHOTO IN HISTORY
Contrary to what you probably believe, the first digital photo dates back to 1957. The American computer scientist Russel Kirsch is responsible for this milestone, with an image of his son measuring 176 pixels and 5×5 cm.
Actually, this image was not taken with a camera but scanned or made through a scanner prototype. However, it was the beginning of not only digital photography, but satellite images, scanners, editing, etc.
The first digital camera came a couple of decades later, in 1975, created by Steve Sasson, a Kodak engineer . This invention was patented by the brand in 1978 and commercialized in 1991.
You already know the most important milestones in the history of photography. In addition to who invented what you feel so passionate about, photography.
It may seem like a very modern invention, but as you can see, it has more than two centuries of evolution behind it, not counting everything that precedes it from the dark room in the Middle Ages.
