The Daguerrian and the Heliograph

from The Franklin Institute Online

In 1826, Frenchman Joseph-Nicephore Niepce took a picture (heliograph, as he called it) of a barn. The image, the result of an eight-hour exposure, was the world's first photograph. Little more than ten years later, his associate Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre devised a way to permanently reproduce an image, and his picture - a daguerreotype - needed just twenty minutes exposure. A practical process of photography was born.

Possible Links for Future Study and Exploration

• The Daguerreian Society
• Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
• Making A Pinhole Camera - An AskERIC Lesson Plan
• Chemistry of Photography
• Chemistry of Photography - an independent study unit
• A History of Photography
• The History, Science and Preservation of Albumen Photographs
• Women in Photography Archive
• Large Format Cameras
• American Photography - A Century of Images
• RetroPhoto
• The Daguerreotype
• Daguerreotype: The Process
• Daguerrean Broadside
• The Social Construction of the American Daguerreotype Portrait
• The Daguerreotype by Edgar Allen Poe
• Daguerreotype: Image Capturing Device for the Home
• From Heliograph to Daguerreotype
• Secrets of the Dark Chamber