Abstract
A CENTURY ago, on July 5, 1833, at the age of sixty-eight years, Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, the pioneer of photography, died near his birthplace, Chelon-sur-Sáne. Born on March 7, 1765, in good circumstances, Niepce, who was of a meditative and poetical temperament, entered the army in 1792, but after serving for two years had to resign owing to ill-health and failing eyesight. Afterwards, for six years, 1795-1801, he held an administrative post in the Nice district and then returned home and with his brother devoted himself to mechanical and chemical experiments. Having his attention directed to the new art of lithography, he conceived the idea of making pictures by the aid of the sun. Many years were spent before he succeeded in obtaining impressions on plates of polished metal covered with asphaltum. Some of his results were shown to the Royal Society in 1826. Niepce then became associated with his countryman, Louis Jacques Daguerre (1789–1851), by whom, after Niepce's death, the art of photography was established on a practical basis. The first daguerreotypes were produced in 1839, and shortly afterwards the French Government granted pensions to Daguerre and to Niepce's son, Isidore. To-day both inventors are commemorated by statues; Daguerre at Cormeilles and Niepce at Châlon-sur-Sáne. In fashioning the statue of Niepce, one writer says: “The sculptor worked for nothing, animated by no motive more selfish than the desire to express in lasting bronze his respect for a great man's memory. If every human being who has had occasion to be grateful to the discoverer of photography had contributed to his work the sculptor might have been royally remunerated, and the statue, instead of bronze, might have been of silver and gold.” In the museum not far from the square in Chelon are preserved some of the apparatus with which Niepce made his notable experiments.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Joseph Nicéphore Niepce. Nature 132, 21 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132021b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132021b0
This article is cited by
-
Field Studies and Physiology: a Further Correlation
Nature (1934)