Who invented Photography and when?

There was no single ‘inventor’ of photography. It evolved through the combined work of many people of many different nationalities. One Frenchman, Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1853), often gets the credit, however, since he was the first to obtain a picture ‘from nature’ with a camera, in the modern photographic sense. He was also the first to ‘fix’ a picture, so that it did not as permanent as with a present day ‘fixer’.

A plaque near the estate where Niepce used to live reads: “Dans ce village Nicephore Niepce inventa la Photographie en 1822″. Experts, having examined the metal plate used in this first photograph, think 1826 is probably more accurate. It was in 1839, when the painter Jacques Daguerre’s process was made public, that the subject of photography became known. Daguerre had modified Niepce’s work to produce his daguerreotype. It was recorded that ‘opticians’ shops were crowded with amateurs panting for daguerreotype apparatus, and.. everyone wanted to record the view from his window.”