Historical Photographers - Nicéphore Niépce Pt. 1

Nicéphore Niépce, born Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833), was a French inventor and a pioneer in the field of photography. He is widely acknowledged for producing the world's first known photograph, titled "View from the Window at Le Gras," in 1826 or 1827.

Retrieved from: Musée Nicéphore Niépce

Background

Nicéphore Niépce was born into a wealthy family in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a lawyer. He had an older brother named Claude, who also participated in research and invention with him, and a younger brother named Bernard. Niépce also had a sister. Interestingly, Niépce was baptised as Joseph but adopted the name Nicéphore in honour of Saint Nicephorus, the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, while studying at the Oratorian college in Angers. This is where he learned about science and the experimental method, and he quickly achieved success, eventually working as a professor at the college.

Niépce's birthplace at Chalon-sur-Saône, with a plaque in his memory

Niépce served as a staff officer in the French army under Napoleon, spending several years in Italy and on the island of Sardinia. However, ill health led him to resign from his military duties. After leaving the army, he married Agnes Romero and became the Administrator of the district of Nice in post-revolutionary France. However, due to his unpopularity, he resigned from this position in 1795 to pursue scientific research with his brother Claude.

In 1801, Niépce and his brother returned to their family's estates in Chalon to continue their scientific endeavours. There, they managed the family estate as independently wealthy gentleman farmers, raising beets and producing sugar.

In 1827, Niépce traveled to England to visit his seriously ill elder brother Claude, who was living in Kew, near London. Claude had descended into delirium and squandered much of the family fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities.

Niépce died of a stroke on 5 July 1833, and he was financially ruined at the time of his death. His grave in the cemetery of Saint-Loup de Varennes was financed by the municipality. The cemetery is near the family house where he conducted his experiments and made the world's oldest surviving photographic image.

Niépce’s grave

Niépce's son, Isidore, continued his father's work after his death. He formed a partnership with Daguerre and was granted a government pension in 1839 in return for disclosing the technical details of Nicéphore's heliogravure process. Niépce’s cousin, Claude Félix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor, was a chemist and was the first to use albumen in photography. He also produced photographic engravings on steel and discovered that uranium salts emit a form of radiation that is invisible to the human eye.

Early Inventions

The Pyréolophore was an early internal combustion engine and the first to power a boat. It was invented in the early 19th century in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, by the Niépce brothers: Nicéphore and Claude. The brothers conducted a successful prototype run in 1807, and on July 20th 1807, they were granted a patent by Napoleon Bonaparte after the engine successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône.

1806 diagram of the Pyréolophore

The engine operated on what were thought to be "controlled dust explosions" of various experimental fuels, including mixtures of Lycopodium powder (the spores of Lycopodium, or clubmoss), finely crushed coal dust, and resin. The Niépce brothers initially used lycopodium spores due to their intense and easy combustion, but due to their cost, they later replaced them with pulverised coal mixed with a small portion of resin, which was found to work very well.

The invention of the Pyréolophore came at a time when François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss engineer, independently built the de Rivaz engine in 1807, which was a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine. This led to the de Rivaz engine being recognised as the first use of an internal combustion engine in an automobile (in 1808), while the Pyréolophore was the first use of such an engine in a boat (in 1807).

The Niépce brothers began their project to create an engine based on the principle of hot air expanding during an explosion while they were living in Nice. Their challenge was to harness the energy released in a series of explosions.

In order to demonstrate the utility of the Pyréolophore to the patent commission, the brothers installed it on a boat, which it successfully powered upstream on the river Saône. The total weight of the boat was about 900 kg, the fuel consumption was reported as "one hundred and twenty-five grains per minute" (about 8 grams per minute), and the performance was 12–13 explosions per minute. The boat was propelled forward as the Pyréolophore sucked in the river water at the front and then pumped it out toward the rear.

River Saône at Chalon, site of the first trials of the Pyréolophore in 1807

Early Photography Experiments

Niépce's early photography experiments focused on developing a technique to capture images using light-sensitive materials. In 1816, he successfully produced the first known photographic images using paper coated with silver chloride, a light-sensitive compound. These images, known as "photogenic drawings", were essentially negative images that darkened when exposed to light.

One such image.

The process for creating photogenic drawings involved several steps:

1. Preparation of the Surface: Niépce would start by coating a piece of paper or a glass plate with a light-sensitive substance. The substance he used was the bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt. The bitumen would harden in proportion to the amount of light it was exposed to.

Bitumen of Judea

2. Exposure: The prepared surface was then placed inside a camera obscura, a dark box with a small hole in one side. The scene to be captured would be projected through this hole and onto the prepared surface. This exposure could take hours or even days, depending on the amount of available light.

3. Development: After the image was captured on the bitumen, the plate would be washed with a mixture of oil, lavender and white petroleum, which would dissolve the unhardened bitumen. What remained was a negative image where the darkest parts of the subject were the lightest, and the lightest parts were the darkest.

4. Fixing the Image: The final step was to fix the image so that it wouldn't continue to darken when exposed to light. Niépce discovered that a strong solution of salt would stabilise the image.

This process was very time-consuming and required a lot of skill to get right. The images that resulted were not very clear, and they didn't capture a lot of detail. Nonetheless, Niépce's technique was a pioneering development in the history of photography.

It's important to note that the term "photogenic drawing" was coined by William Henry Fox Talbot, another early photography pioneer who was working in England at around the same time as Niépce. Talbot used the term to describe his technique, which involved sensitising paper to light using silver salts. However, the principles of capturing light on a sensitive surface and then developing and fixing the image are common to both Niépce and Talbot's methods.

To be continued…