How did the first photo come out?

Nipps was the first experimenter who used a camera combined with photosensitive materials to permanently record images. In order to take the world's first photo, he finally succeeded after ten years of exploration.

First, "leading the horse" and "scenery outside the window"

March 2, 20021day, French inventor n? The Horse Puller by Nipps (1765 ~ 1833) was collected by the French National Library, and the transaction price was $398,000. This photo was taken at 1825, which is the earliest photo ever found in the world. It's a remake of the17th century Dutch print, which records the scene of a child leading a horse across the river. At the same time, some letters from Nipps were auctioned, which introduced the production method and process of this photo.

The development technology and existing photos of Nipps "mark a historic new discovery and will rewrite the chronicle of natural science." Sotheby's photo expert said: This photo (1825) and the attached letter instruct us to rewrite the first stage of photography history.

Before Lamar Man was discovered, photographic historians agreed that Nipps invented photography, but once thought that the earliest photo was "Scenery Outside the Window" taken by him in 1826. The size of this photo is 16.5×20cm, which is the scenery outside Nipps's studio. On the left of the photo is a dovecote, with a sloping roof in the middle and a corner of the building on the right. During the eight-hour exposure, the sun moved from east to west, so there were shadows in both directions.

Second, Nipps is both a person and a thing.

Nipps 1765 was born in Salon, a small town in central France, and was the second son of his family. He likes to make some machine models or make some small inventions since he was a child. This hobby has not changed until adulthood.

By chance, Nipps became fascinated with making lithographs. At that time, this lithograph production method introduced from Germany to France was very popular in France. On the basis of making lithographs, Nipps further studied the use of sunlight to make photos. In his letter to his brother, he wrote: I want to do three things. First, make these paintings more three-dimensional. Second, we should truly reflect the colors of nature. Third, fix the image and color.

In order to fix the image, Nipps tried many materials, first silver chloride, then resin and phosphorus, but finally gave up these materials.

/kloc-in 0/820, Nipps discovered a kind of asphalt, which will harden after illumination, and will not dissolve even when it meets liquid, while the unexposed part can be dissolved in lavender juice. So he painted a layer of varnish on the back of the print to make the painting transparent, and then covered it on the asphalt-coated iron sheet and exposed it in the sun. The transparent part of the printed matter can let sunlight pass through and shine on the asphalt to form a white solid. Asphalt not exposed to sunlight is dissolved in lavender juice. As a result, the printed image is fixed on the tin sheet. Nipps called this method "solar etching".

After that, Nipps applied the "sunlight etching method" to the camera box to study how to fix the image in the camera box. He put the iron sheet coated with asphalt on the imaging surface of the camera box and exposed it. Then soak the exposed tin foil in lavender juice. So he got an image, the bright part of the image was white, and the dark part was the iron sheet exposed after the asphalt dissolved. However, this kind of photo is unstable in color and dim in tone, which is of little value. Nevertheless, he didn't lose heart and tried again and again. After ten years of hard work, he finally succeeded.

Nipps was the first experimenter who used a camera combined with photosensitive materials to permanently record images. Of course, this experiment is only the embryonic stage of photography, and there are still obvious shortcomings. Because asphalt changes too slowly, it needs several hours of exposure, and in such a long exposure time, the angle of sunlight will change greatly, making the image blurred and lacking of three-dimensional sense. However, after all, Nipps left us the first permanent photographic image in the world.