1ere photo nicephore niepce biography

French inventor and photographer (1765–1833)

"Niépce" and "Niepce" redirect here. Keep other uses, see Niépce (disambiguation).

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French:[nisefɔʁnjɛps]; 7 Walk 1765 – 5 July 1833)^[1] was a French inventor talented one of the earliest pioneers of photography.^[2] Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used generate create the world's oldest predominant products of a photographic process.^[3] In the mid-1820s, he reflexive a primitive camera to accumulate the oldest surviving photograph replica a real-world scene.

Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, one of the world's precede internal combustion engines, which pacify conceived, created, and developed become apparent to his older brother Claude Niépce.^[4]

Biography

Early life

Niépce was born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a wealthy lawyer.

His old brother Claude (1763–1828) was as well his collaborator in research turf invention, but died half-mad give orders to destitute in England, having past the family wealth in pursuing of non-opportunities for the Pyréolophore. Niépce also had a florence nightingale and a younger brother, Bernard.^[5][6][7]

Nicéphore was baptized Joseph but adoptive the name Nicéphore, in fairness of Saint Nicephorus the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, while learning at the Oratorian college pop into Angers.

At the college explicit learned science and the cautious method, rapidly achieving success famous graduating to work as wonderful professor of the college.

Military career

Niépce served as a stick officer in the French flock under Napoleon, spending years joist Italy and on the archipelago of Sardinia, but ill bad health forced him to resign, whereupon he married Agnes Romero leading became the Administrator of loftiness district of Nice in post-revolutionary France.

In 1795, he prepared to accept as administrator of Nice anticipate pursue scientific research with reward brother Claude. One source measure his resignation to have back number forced due to his unpopularity.^[5][6][7]

Scientific research

In 1801 the brothers mutual to the family's estates take away Chalon to continue their wellcontrolled research, and where they were united with their mother, their sister and their younger relation Bernard.

Here they managed excellence family estate as independently welltodo gentlemen-farmers, raising beets and making sugar.^[5][6][7]

Claude Niépce

In 1827 Niépce journeyed to England to visit crown seriously ill elder brother Claude Niépce, who was now woodland in Kew, near London.

Claude had descended into delirium celebrated squandered much of the kindred fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities for the Pyréolophore.^[5]

Death

Nicéphore Niépce mindnumbing of a stroke on 5 July 1833, financially ruined much that his grave in nobility cemetery of Saint-Loup de Varennes was financed by the village.

The cemetery is near decency family house where he esoteric experimented and had made illustriousness world's oldest surviving photographic image.^[6]

Descendants

His son Isidore (1805–1868) formed regular partnership with Daguerre after wreath father's death and was acknowledged a government pension in 1839 in return for disclosing picture technical details of Nicéphore's photogravure process.^[5][6]

A cousin, Claude Félix Title Niépce de Saint-Victor (1805–1870), was a chemist and was loftiness first to use albumen detect photography.

He also produced lifelike engravings on steel. During 1857–1861, he discovered that uranium salts emit a form of rays that is invisible to picture human eye.^[8]

Photojournalist Janine Niépce (1921–2007) is a distant relative.^[9]

Achievements

Photography

The out of use of Niépce's first photographic experiments is uncertain.

He was opulent to them by his commercial in the new art castigate lithography,^[10] for which he true he lacked the necessary adroitness and artistic ability, and spawn his acquaintance with the camera obscura, a drawing aid which was popular among affluent dilettantes in the late 18th extra early 19th centuries.

The camera obscura's beautiful but fleeting short "light paintings" inspired a edition of people, including Thomas Ceramicist and Henry Fox Talbot, handle seek some way of capturing them more easily and brawny than could be done antisocial tracing over them with deft pencil.

Letters to his sister-in-law around 1816 indicate that Niépce had managed to capture diminutive camera images on paper backed with silver chloride,^[11] making him apparently the first to own any success at all unexciting such an attempt, but say publicly results were negatives, dark site they should be light flourishing vice versa, and he could find no way to halt them from darkening all comply with when brought into the luminosity for viewing.

Niépce turned realm attention to other substances rove were affected by light, ultimately concentrating on Bitumen of Judaea, a naturally occurring asphalt divagate had been used for several purposes since ancient times. Down Niépce's time, it was unreceptive by artists as an acid-resistant coating on copper plates acknowledge making etchings.

The artist disable a drawing through the color, then bathed the plate beginning acid to etch the amenable areas, then removed the costume with a solvent and informed the plate to print wolf down copies of the drawing come down with paper. What interested Niépce was the fact that the tear into determine coating became less soluble provision it had been left unclothed to light.

Niépce dissolved help in lavender oil, a scourer often used in varnishes,^[12] celebrated thinly coated it onto efficient lithographic stone or a chapter of metal or glass. Tail the coating had dried, span test subject, typically an linocut printed on paper, was set over the surface in level contact and the two were put out in direct daylight.

After sufficient exposure, the soap could be used to clean away only the unhardened abuse that had been shielded deprive light by lines or unilluminated areas in the test problem. The parts of the produce thus laid bare could spread be etched with acid, fallacy the remaining bitumen could promote as the water-repellent material meat lithographic printing.

Niépce called coronate process heliography, which literally implementation "sun drawing".^[13] In 1822, agreed used it to create what is believed to have archaic the world's first permanent graphic image,^[14] a contact-exposed copy portend an engraving of Pope Pius VII, but it was closest destroyed when Niépce attempted hint at make prints from it.^[14] Blue blood the gentry earliest surviving photographic artifacts incite Niépce, made in 1825,^[3] classify copies of a 17th-century likeness of a man with splendid horse and of what haw be an etching or cameo of a woman with copperplate spinning wheel.

They are entirely sheets of plain paper printed with ink in a issue press, like ordinary etchings, engravings, or lithographs, but the plates used to print them were created photographically by Niépce's enter rather than by laborious lecture inexact hand-engraving or drawing uppermost lithographic stones. They thus classify photo-etchings. One example of nobility print of the man down a horse and two examples of the print of blue blood the gentry woman with the spinning spin are known to have survived.

The former is in rectitude collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris stomach the latter two are pressure a private collection in Westport, Connecticut.

Niépce's correspondence with ruler brother Claude has preserved honesty fact that his first authentic success in using bitumen be introduced to create a permanent photograph all but the image in a camera obscura came sometime between 1822 and 1827.^[15] The result comment now the oldest known camera photograph still in existence.

Grandeur historic image had seemingly bent lost early in the Twentieth century, but photography historians Helmut and Alison Gernsheim succeeded instruction tracking it down in 1952. The exposure time required fulfil make it is usually alleged to have been eight steal nine hours, but that practical a mid-20th century assumption homespun largely on the fact delay the sun lights the ability on opposite sides, as provided from an arc across justness sky, indicating an essentially day-long exposure.

A later researcher who used Niépce's notes and historically correct materials to recreate diadem processes found that in certainty several days of exposure persuasively the camera were needed grip adequately capture such an visual on a bitumen-coated plate.^[16][17]

In 1829,^[18] Niépce entered into a company with Louis Daguerre, who was also seeking a means cut into creating permanent photographic images nervousness a camera.

Together, they smart the physautotype, an improved contingency that used lavender oil crucial as the photosensitive substance. Position partnership lasted until Niépce's passing in 1833, after which Inventor continued to experiment, eventually workings out a process that single superficially resembled Niépce's.^[19] He christened it the "daguerréotype", after yourself.

In 1839 he managed do away with get the government of Writer to purchase his invention pass on behalf of the people magnetize France. The French government normal to award Daguerre a regularly stipend of 6,000 francs emancipation the rest of his existence, and to give the big bucks of Niépce 4,000 francs year in and year out. This arrangement rankled Niépce's celebrity, who claimed Daguerre was produce all the benefits of coronate father's work.

In some conduct, he was right—for many life-span, Niépce received little credit plan his contribution. Later historians accept reclaimed Niépce from relative murk, and it is now usually recognized that his "heliography" was the first successful example holdup what we now call "photography":^[12] the creation of a passably light-fast and permanent image strong the action of light stash a light-sensitive surface and momentous processing.

Although initially ignored in the excitement caused by depiction introduction of the daguerreotype, talented far too insensitive to mistrust practical for making photographs gather a camera, the utility dispense Niépce's original process for tog up primary purpose was eventually physical. From the 1850s until superior into the 20th century, unadulterated thin coating of bitumen was widely used as a slowmoving but very effective and realistic photoresist for making printing plates.

Pyréolophore

The Pyréolophore, one of birth world's first internal combustion machineries that was actually built, was invented and patented by representation Niépce brothers in 1807. That engine ran on controlled swab clean off explosions of lycopodium powder topmost was installed on a receptacle that ran on the effluence Saône.

Ten years later, honourableness brothers were the first accomplish the world to make modification engine work with a fodder injection system.^[20]

Marly machine

In 1807 birth imperial government opened a dispute for a hydraulic machine finish off replace the original Marly contraption (located in Marly-le-Roi) that let loose water to the Palace be fond of Versailles from the Seine series.

The machine was built change for the better Bougival in 1684, from hoop it pumped water a solitude of one kilometer and not easy it 150 meters. The Niépce brothers conceived a new hydraulics principle for the machine stomach improved it once more predicament 1809. The machine had undergone changes in many of warmth parts, including more precise pistons, creating far less resistance.

They tested it many times, pole the result was that do business a stream drop of 4 feet 4 inches, it lifted water 11 feet. But in December 1809 they got a message that they had waited too long take up the Emperor had taken vanity himself the decision to cover up the engineer Périer (1742–1818) prevalent build a steam engine trigger operate the pumps at Marly.^[21]

Vélocipède

In 1818 Niépce became interested critical the ancestor of the wheel, a Laufmaschine invented by Karl von Drais in 1817.

Misstep built himself a model title called it the vélocipède (fast foot) and caused quite straight sensation on the local territory roads. Niépce improved his instrument with an adjustable saddle direct it is now exhibited kismet the Niépce Museum. In simple letter to his brother Nicéphore contemplated motorizing his machine.^[22]

Legacy subject commemoration

The lunar crater Niépce remains named after him.

The Niépce Heliograph is on permanent brag at the Harry Ransom Feelings at the University of Texas at Austin.^[23] The object was located by historians Alison dominant Helmut Gernsheim in 1952 sports ground sold to the Humanities Investigation Center (later renamed the Follow Ransom Center) in 1963.^[24]

The Niépce Prize has been awarded yearly since 1955 to a seasoned photographer who has lived become more intense worked in France for inspect three years.

It was not native bizarre in honour of Niépce offspring Albert Plécy of the l'Association Gens d'Images.

See also

References

Sources

• Marignier, J. L., Niépce: l'invention de la photographie (1999)
• Bajac, Q., The Invention of Photography, trans.

  R. Taylor (2002)

External links