Ok, so I thought it might be interesting to do a series of posts on the history of Photography! I remember how interesting I found it when I first studied the history of Photography when I started school. Basically my first week of lessons was all on how, where, when and why photography came about! I was AMAZED!!! I had no idea how long photographs had been around and how someone could be as smart as these guys were! So here's the first in this series, the very first recorder photograph! I hope you enjoy!

Aristotle and Leonardo Da Vinci had experimented with the camera obscura idea. The term 'Camera Obscura' however was first used by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the early 17th century. He used it for astronomical applications and had a portable tent camera for surveying in Upper Austria.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, in Britain, several scientists and artists were working to capture camera obscura images. Humphrey Davy and Thomas Wedgwood found that objects placed directly on materials that had been sensitized with silver chloride and exposed to sunlight would leave momentary impressions that would later fade.

In 1816 the French Inventor Joseph Nice'phore Nie'pce was experimenting with silver salts and the camera obscura and succeeded to create a paper negative but he could not prevent it from fading. He then turned to plates of pewter coated with bitumen of Judea, a type of varnish that hardened when exposed to sunlight. After his first experiment placing a drawing in contact with this plate, he exposed it to sunlight for several hours. After exposure he removed the unexposed areas with a mixture of turpentine and lavender oil  to reveal a barely visible image of the original drawing. He called this process ' Heliography ' meaning - sun drawing. He then started to experiment with Heliography and a camera obscura. He apparently enjoyed some success, though only one of these plates is known to survive. Made in about 1826, the photo below shows a view from Nie'pce's attic workroom and is generally regarded as the world's earliest surviving photograph!