1800- Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) produces "sun pictures" by placing opaque objects on leather
treated with silver nitrate; resulting images deteriorated rapidly.
1816- Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper.
1826- Joseph Niépce produces the first permanent image (Heliograph) using a camera obscura and white
bitumen (Figure 1).
1829- Niépce and Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) sign a ten year agreement to work in partnership
developing their new recording medium.
1834- Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver
chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another
sheet of paper. Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, published in six installments between 1844 and 1846 was
the first book to be illustrated entirely with photographs.
1837- Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed"
with warmed mercury (daguerreotype).
1839- Louis Daguerre patents the daguerreotype. The daguerreotype process is released for general use
in return for annual state pensions given to Daguerre and Isidore Niépce (Louis Daguerre’s son): 6000
and 4000 francs respectively.
1939- John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) uses for the first time the term Photography
(meaning writing with light).
1939- First unsuccessful daguerreotype of the moon obtained by Daguerre (blurred image – long
exposure).
1839- François Jean Dominique Arago (1786-1853) announces the daguerreotype process at the French
Academy of Sciences (January, 7 and August, 19). Arago predicts the future use of the photographic
technique in the fields of selenography, photometry and spectroscopy.
1840- John William Draper (1811-1882) obtains the first successful (correctly exposed) daguerreotype of
the moon using a 13 cm reflector with a long focal length (20 min exposures).
1841- Henry Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype".
1842- Austrian astronomer G.A. Majocchi obtains the first photograph of the partial phase of a solar
eclipse on a daguerreotype in 1842 (July, 8) (2 min exposure).
1844/1845- According to J.D. Arago, a large number of daguerreotypes of the sun were obtained by
Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau (1819-1896) and Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1818-1868) at the Paris
observatory. One of these photographs, taken on April 2, 1845, still survives (Figure 2).
1849/1852- William Cranch Bond (1789-1859) and John Adams Whipple (1822-1891) obtain a series of
lunar daguerreotypes with the 38 cm Harvard refractor (40 s exposures) (Figure 3).
1850- First star photograph (α Lyrae, Vega) obtained by John Adams Whipple and William Cranch Bond
using the 38 cm Harvard refractor (daguerreotype, 100 s exposure).
1851- Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857), improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of
collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate
collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes; the negative/positive process permitted
unlimited reproductions. The process was published but not patented