Before the camera lucida was developed. Thomas Wedgwood, son of the British potter, had already attempted to make permanent prints "by the agency of light.” He bathed paper or leather in silver nitrate solution: a painting or drawing made on glass was placed over the paper, and the whole exposed to light. Where the glass was clear, light penetrated to the silver salts on the paper, turning them dark. The leaf of a tree pressed against light-sensitive paper left, on exposure to light, a record of its form in white on a dark ground; semi-transparent material passed light in proportion to its transparence, with the consequence that middle tones could be recorded.
Wedgwood was dismayed that his sun prints were not permanent. He found no way to desensitize the prepared paper. When the drawing or object was removed, light darkened the white areas. Only by keeping his results in darkness could they be prevented from turning dark; he looked at them furtively by the weak light of a candle. He attempted to record the camera’s image, but his silver nitrate paper was not light sensitive enough, and attempts to use the more sensitive silver chloride were not successful. Ill health forced him to abandon further experiments, and all that remains of his work is a short account written in collaboration with his friend, Humphrey Davy, for the Journal of the Royal Institution, 1802.
Joseph-Nicephore Niepce of Chalon-sur-Saone, France, was more successful. Although no authenticated example of his camera work remains today, his letters and eyewitness accounts leave no doubt that, between 1816 and 1829, he often succeeded in permanently fixing the camera’s image.
Nicephore Niepce and his brother Claude were ardent inventors. They had patented a hot-air engine; when lithography was introduced, Nicephore turned his attention to it. He had no artistic skill, and first relied on others for the drawings which he reproduced. Soon he conceived the possibility of making them by means of light. On April 1, 1816 he wrote to his brother Claude in Paris:
The experiments I have thus far made lead me to believe that my process will succeed as far as the principal effect is concerned, but I must succeed in fixing the colors; that is what occupies me at the moment, and it is the most difficult.
A few days later he described his camera as “a kind of artificial eye, simply a little box, each side six inches square, which will be fitted with a tube that can be lengthened carrying a lenticular glass.”
He broke the lens and had to make a new camera, smaller in size — about 1 1/4 inches on each side — because the only other lens he had was from his solar microscope.
I placed the apparatus in the room where I work, facing the bird house and the open casement. I made the experiment according to the process which you know [he EDME quenedy: Portrait of M. de Monval, 1812. Print from plate engraved with the physionotrace. Collection Julien Levy, New York
wrote his brother on May 5, 1816] and I saw on the white paper all that part of the bird house seen from the window and a faint image of the casement which was less illuminated than the exterior objects. This is but an imperfect trial . . . The possibility of painting in this way seems to me almost demonstrated . . . That which you have foreseen has happened. The background of the picture is black, and the objects white, that is, lighter than the background.
This is an accurate description of a negative. The copies of natural objects and paintings upon glass which Wedgwood made by contact printing showed this same reversal of tone. Had Niepce only thought of making prints from these negatives he could have again inverted the tones so that they corresponded to the order of lights and shades in nature. But he wanted to secure pictures directly in the camera.
He began to search for a substance which light would bleach instead of darken. His experiments were fruitless until he found that a certain type of bitumen or asphalt, normally soluble in lavender oil, became insoluble in that chemical on exposure to light. At first, instead of trying to reproduce the infinite shades of light which form the camera's image, he attempted to fix
A camera lucida. From V. Chevalier,
Notice sur I’usage de la chambre claire,
Paris, 1834
simply the black and white contrasts of an engraving, Isidore, Niepce’s son, recounts how his father
spread on a well-polished pewter plate bitumen of Judea dissolved in Dippel’s oil. On this varnish he placed the engraving to be reproduced, which had been made transparent, and exposed the whole to the light . . . After a time he immersed the plate in a solvent which bit by bit brought out the image which until then had remained invisible; then he washed the plate and let it dry. After these different operations, for the purpose of etching it, he placed it in water more or less acidified.
My father sent this plate to [the engraver Augustin Francois] Lemaitre, requesting him to contribute his talent in engraving the drawing still deeper. M. Lemaitre acceded very courteously to my father’s request. He pulled several proofs of this portrait of Cardinal d’Amboise . . .
The printed lines of the engraving had held back the light; the white paper had permitted it to pass through. Thus most of the bitumen was rendered insoluble, but that which lay directly under the lines remained soluble and could be removed by lavender oil. The bared metal was then etched to form a printing plate.
This process Niepce named heliography. It is a photoengraving technique. Now Niepce went further. He attempted to fix in a similar manner the camera’s image. Using glass instead of metal, he was partially successful.
In January, 1826, Niepce received a letter from a stranger who said that he had been given Niepce’s address by their mutual lens maker, Chevalier of Paris, and claimed he was working along similar lines. Jealous of his secret, Niepce replied warily. More than a year passed before the other, as cagey as Niepce, wrote again. This second note led Niepce to ask Lemaitre: “Do you know one of the inventors of the Diorama, M. Daguerre?” He received an immediate reply:
You ask me if I know M. Daguerre? A few years ago, without knowing him personally, I went to soirees where I met him. Last spring, having been commissioned by a publisher to engrave one of his paintings in the Luxembourg Gallery I went to show him the drawing I had made: that is how I made his acquaintance; I haven’t seen him since, except in going to see one of his paintings at the Diorama, and I have to submit to him at the end of the month a proof of my engraving, which is almost finished.
As to what I think of him: M. Daguerre, as a painter, has a fine talent for imitation, and an exquisite taste for the arrangement of his pictures. I believe he has an unusual understanding of stage machinery and lighting effects; the connoisseur, visiting his establishment, can easily convince himself of that. I know he has busied himself for a long time perfecting the camera obscura, but I do not know the object of his work.
Daguerre sent Niepce something noncommittal in the graphic line, which he called dessin fumee, and Niepce, in exchange, sent him a lightly etched heliographic plate which, he told Lemaitre, “could in no way compromise the secret of my discovery.” Still they were getting closer in a veiled correspondence in which each hinted at that which the other did not have but needed. On June 4, 1827, Niepce made his firs positive approach to Daguerre for active collaboration. Nothing came of it.
Then in England Claude Niepce fell ill, and his brother set off to visit him at the end of August. He was held up in Paris by passport difficulties and the advent of Charles X in Calais, which so jammed the stage coaches to the port that no seat was to be had. Niepce took occasion of the delay to meet Daguerre in person.