Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French: [nisefɔʁ njɛps]; 7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833) was a French inventor and one of the pioneers of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving products of a photographic process. In the mid-1820s, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude Niépce.
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Nicéphore Niépce in the context of Photograph
A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an image or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and practice of creating such images is called photography.
Most photographs are now created using a smartphone or camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would perceive.
Nicéphore Niépce in the context of View from the Window at Le Gras
View from the Window at Le Gras (French: Point de vue du Gras) is the oldest surviving photograph. It was created by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce sometime between 1826 and 1827 in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and shows parts of the buildings and surrounding countryside of his estate, Le Gras, as seen from a high window. The image was created by heliography, a process which Niépce had invented around 1822, and which uses the hardening of bitumen in light to record an image after washing off the remaining unhardened material.
Nicéphore Niépce in the context of Heliography
Heliography is an early photographic process, based on the hardening of bitumen in sunlight. It was invented by Nicéphore Niépce around 1822. Niépce used the process to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827), and the first realisation of photoresist as means to reproduce artworks through inventions of photolithography and photogravure.
Nicéphore Niépce in the context of Pyréolophore
The Pyréolophore (French: [piʁeɔlɔfɔʁ]) was an early internal combustion engine and the first made to power a boat. It was invented in the early 19th century in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, by the Niépce brothers: Nicéphore (who went on to invent photography) and Claude. In 1807 the brothers ran a prototype internal combustion engine, and on 20 July 1807 a patent was granted by Napoleon Bonaparte after it had successfully powered a boat upstream on the river Saône.
The Pyréolophore ran on what were believed to be "controlled dust explosions" of various experimental fuels. The fuels included mixtures of lycopodium powder (the spores of Lycopodium, or clubmoss), finely crushed coal dust, and resin.
Nicéphore Niépce in the context of Claude Niépce
Claude Félix Abel Niépce (1764 – early 1828) was a French inventor and the older brother of the more celebrated Nicéphore Niépce. Claude traveled to England to try to find a sponsor for their internal combustion engine and died there. His brother's later successful development of photography has eclipsed the part played by Claude.