A look at the world's 1st photograph

One summer morning, Joseph Nicephore Niepce peered from an upstairs window in his home in the French countryside, framed the view of a pear tree, the sky and several farm buildings and did something remarkable: He took a picture.

Opening the lens of a rudimentary camera for eight hours that day in 1826, Niepce exposed a polished, thinly varnished pewter plate to produce an image that is acknowledged as the world's first photograph. In June, 176 years later, the faint image will arrive at The Getty Conservation Institute, where scientific experts will analyze it for the first time since it was rediscovered and authenticated in 1952. Before it turned up, the photo had been missing for decades, misplaced by its owner after it was last exhibited in 1898.
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thanks to consumptive.org