Joseph Nicephore Niepce

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy, March 7, 1765 - Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, July 5, 1833) was a physicist, lithographer, inventor and French amateur scientist who invented, with his brother Claude, a motor for boats (the pyreophore, 1807) and, together with Louis Daguerre, the first known successful photographic process (heliography), being usually called the "inventor of photography" and a pioneer of it.

Semblance

Niépce was interested in lithography and began his experiences with optical image reproduction by making copies of works of art using drawings made on lithographic stone by his son. His first experiments, in 1813, used resinous gums exposed to direct sunlight. His first success in obtaining a light-sensitive medium came with the use of asphalt dissolved in lavender oil, essential oil of lavender.

When his son enlisted in the army in 1814, he had the idea of using a camera obscura in conjunction with light-sensitive silver salts to try to get still images. He began using the stone as a support to fix the images, although he soon gave up due to the great problems it entailed. He then moved on to paper, then glass, and finally various metals such as tin, copper, and pewter.

He obtained the first photographic images in history in the year 1825, although none of them have been preserved; it is known about them from references in the letters that Niépce sent to his brother. They were photographs on paper and in negative, but like many other inventors of that time, he was not interested in obtaining negative images, so he abandoned this line of research.

A couple of years later, already in 1827, he obtained directly positive images, thus sacrificing the possibilities of reproducing the images, since the images obtained were unique.

He called the procedure used heliography (from the Greek ἥλιος, helios, "sun", and γραφία, graphy, "writing" or "drawing"), distinguishing between photogravures —reproductions of already existing engravings— and points of view —images captured directly from life by the camera. In 1822, Joseph-Nicéphore NIepce managed to fix something on glass to which he decided to give the name heliograph. Niepce and his son Isadore, said to have been a painter and sculptor, had been practicing the art of lithography since about 1813. Since good quality lithographic limestone was hard to come by, they were soon replaced by pewter plates. Later, working alone (around 1816), Niepce senior, who was not a very good draftsman, had the idea of photographically recording an image on a plate and etching it for printing. After several unsuccessful experiments with silver chloride, Niepce used another photosensitive substance called Judean bitumen; unexposed parts could dissolve, exposing the metal to be etched on. Niepce managed to obtain a few proofs with this method, using as negatives engravings that he had made transparent by rubbing them with oil or wax. One of his heliographic engravings was a landscape imitated by Claudius of Lorraine. Niepce (1826-1827) also took a view of a courtyard with a camera obscura, although this required an exposure time of about eight hours.

View from the window in Le Gras. Original photograph created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826.

Most widespread modern reproduction.

View from the Window at Le Gras, dated 1826, is the earliest known photograph and is now kept at the University of Texas. However, the semiotician Roland Barthes, in his work Cámara lucida (Paidós, Barcelona, 1989), includes a later image that the author accompanies with a caption: “The first photograph”. This is the work The Table Set, a blurry snapshot of a table set for a meal, dated by the author to 1822, which is preserved in the Nicéphore Niepce Museum. Point of view from Gras's window, made some ten years after he obtained the first images, includes a point of view of a street fixed on a metal plate. It required eight hours of exposure time for the plate to light. To take this photograph, he used a pewter plate covered with Judean bitumen, exposing the plate to light and leaving the image invisible; the parts of the varnish affected by light became insoluble. After exposure, the plate was bathed in a solvent of lavender oil and white petroleum oil, the parts of varnish not affected by light breaking up. It was washed with water, being able to appreciate the image made up of the bitumen layer for the clearings and the shadows on the surface of the silver plate.

Although Niépce lived and worked in Burgundy, at one point in his research he required a new lens and asked a relative traveling to Paris to get it from the Chevalier family optician, Father Vincent Jacques Louis Chevalier (1770-1841) and son Charles Louis Chevalier (1804-1859), also giving him some photographic evidence of his experiments. The Chevalliers knew Daguerre and told him about Niépce and his blueprints. From that moment, Daguerre tried various ways to associate with Niépce, until in 1829 he managed to sign a contract for the incorporation of a company, on December 14, 1829, through which Niépce revealed his advances for the development and commercialization of the invention..

Due to a stroke suffered in his studio in Saint Loup de Varennes (Burgundy), he died on July 5, 1833, at the age of sixty-eight, being buried in the town cemetery.

Niépce's participation in the invention of photography, which was made public in 1839 with the sole prominence of Daguerre, was the result of the initial lack of interest of his son Isidore Niépce, who inherited and negotiated with Daguerre the benefits of that contract not It is very well known where it comes from, but the invention was sold to the French State, but he did not claim recognition of his father's participation. However, in 1841 he published the work entitled History of the discovery of the invention called daguerreotype, in which his role in the history of the invention of photography could be clarified, given the maneuvers carried out by Daguerre to hide their jobs.

Eponymy

• Moon crater Niepce carries this name in his memory.
• The asteroid (3117) Niepce also commemorates its name.