At present, cameras can be found in all kinds of devices, from smartphones, tablets, computers and others, but do you know how long did it take the first camera in history to take a simple photo?
How long does it take you to take a photo or a selfie? It is so quick and easy that even a child can do it without much difficulty. However, for us to have reached this practicality in taking pictures, humanity has had to travel a long way.
Would you believe if we told you that the first camera on record took hours to do? Well, believe it or not, the truth is that the invention of physicist Joseph Nicephore Niepce it took 8 hours to take an image.
Although the image titled “Point of View from the Gras Window”which dates from 1826, is the first known photo, being kept today at the University of Texas, the semiotician Roland Barthesin his work “Camera Lucida” includes a later photograph that the author accompanies with the caption “The first photograph”.
“The first photograph” was nothing more than the work “The table set”, which consisted of a blurry snapshot of a table set for diners, which was taken in 1822. Currently, the piece is kept in the Nicephore Niepce Museum.
Said image, which was taken about a decade after the inventor obtained the first images, shows a point of view of a street fixed on a metal plate. For this, he needed 8 hours of exposure time of the light plate. In order to take the photo, I use a pewter plate covered with Judean bitumen, exposing the plate to light and leaving the visible image. Likewise, the parts of the varnish affected by light became insoluble.
After exposure, the plate was bathed in a lavender essential oil and white petroleum oil solvent, disintegrating the parts of varnish not affected by light. After that, it was washed with water, with which it was possible to observe the image composed of the bitumen layer for the clearings and the shadows on the surface of the silver plate.
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The journey of the French lithographer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce began in 1814 when he used stone as a support to try to achieve still images. Then, in 1825, he managed to obtain the first photographs on paper and negative. While in 1827 he managed to take positive photos, calling the procedure heliography.
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