Photography Invented – 2

Making but a short stay in England, Niepce returned to France, where, in 1829, he entered into a partnership with another investigator named Daguerre.

Continuing Photography Invented,
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Previously in Photography Invented.

Time: 1838
Place: France

Making but a short stay in England, Niepce returned to France, where, in 1829, he entered into a partnership with another investigator named Daguerre. But Niepce was not destined to complete his work, or even to publish his results; he died in 1833, at the age of sixty-eight. Although it is impossible to assign the title of “Inventor of Photography” to any one man, yet Niepce has probably the best claim to it. A statue of Niepce has been erected at Chalons.

Lithography, invented by a German, Senefelder, in 1798, was successfully practiced in France in 1812. Expert draughtsmen were required to execute the necessary drawings upon the prepared surfaces of the smooth blocks of limestone employed. Now Niepce thought that it might be possible, by the action of light, to cause designs, engravings, etc., to copy themselves upon the lithographic stone. The basis of all his work was the discovery that bitumen, or “Jew’s pitch,” as it was then commonly called, is rendered insoluble by the action of light. Niepce dissolved bitumen in oil of lavender and spread a thin layer of it upon the stone. Next he varnished the drawing on paper, of which he desired to secure an impression — the varnish rendering the paper fairly transparent — and laid it upon the bitumenized stone.

After exposing the whole to sunlight for an hour or so, the paper was removed and oil of lavender poured upon the bitumen, by which those portions of it that had been protected from light by the opaque lines of the drawing were dissolved away and the surface of the stone beneath was in those parts exposed. Thus the outlines of the original subject were reproduced with perfect truth. Lastly, by treating the stone with an acid, the exposed portions could be “bitten” or eroded more deeply and it was then ready for printing from. Finding much difficulty in securing stone of a sufficiently fine and close grain, Niepce substituted metal, employing plates of polished tin, etc., on which to spread the bitumen. Although the results he obtained were far from perfect, yet they were very promising and heliography, as Niepce named this method, has since proved very useful.

Having obtained pictures by what we may call contact -printing, Niepce’s next endeavor was to apply his process to securing the beautiful views produced by the aid of a camera. For this purpose he tried the chlorides of silver and of iron and gum guaiacum, whose sensibility to light had been investigated by Wollaston in 1804. Nothing, however, answered so well in his hands as the surface of bitumen or asphalt, with which he had already been successful in heliography. When exposed to the action of the light forming the picture within the camera, the bitumen became insoluble in proportion to the intensity of the light by which the various parts of the image were produced, an effect which we now know to be due to the oxidation and consequent hardening of this resinous substance.

When the resinized plate was removed from the camera, no picture at all was visible on its surface. But by steeping the exposed plate in a mixture of oil of lavender and petroleum, the still soluble portions of the bitumen were removed. The shadows of the landscape were then represented by bare portions of the metal plate, while the insoluble resin which remained indicated the brightest parts, or “high-lights,” of the original. Obviously such a picture would look more natural if the portions of polished metal exposed could be darkened and for this purpose we know that Niepce employed various chemicals and among others iodine.

It is unfortunate that Nicephore Niepce never published a single line descriptive of his methods, so that it is only from his correspondence — and more especially his letters to his brother Claude — that we can glean our information. The difficulties of an experimenter in an obscure French town, at that time, were indeed great. Niepce tells us that his first camera was fashioned out of a cigar-box, while his lenses were “the lenses of the solar microscope which belonged to our grandfather Barrault.”

In a letter written to his brother in 1816 Niepce describes how he secured what was probably the first picture ever taken in a camera. “My object-glass being broken and being no longer able to use my camera, I made an artificial eye with Isidore’s ring-box, a little thing from sixteen to eighteen lines square. I placed this little apparatus in my workroom, facing the open window looking upon the pigeon-house. I made the experiment in the way you are acquainted with and I saw on the white paper the whole of the pigeon-house seen from the window. One could distinguish the effects of the solar rays in the picture from the pigeon-house up to the window-sash. The possibility of painting by this means appears almost clear to me. I do not hide from myself that there are great difficulties, especially as regards fixing the colors but with work and patience one can accomplish much.”

“Work” and “patience”! Truly Niepce himself combined these in no common degree. From the reference to white paper used in this early experiment, it would seem probable that silver chloride was employed. We know that Niepce used the sub stance and that he gave it up, because, like Wedgwood and Davy, he was unable to fix or render permanent the pictures secured by its aid.

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