Joseph Nicéphore Niépce invented photography: around 1826–1827, at his estate in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, he fixed the first permanent photograph — 'View from the Window at Le Gras' — on a bitumen-coated pewter plate, after an eight-hour exposure. Daguerre's 1839 daguerreotype made it practical; Talbot's calotype gave the negative-positive system.
Niépce died in 1833, six years before the world learned his name; Daguerre, his partner, took the glory and the French state's pension. But the bitumen plate survived: Niépce's rooftop view — grainy, tilted, miraculous — is the oldest photograph in existence, the moment humanity learned to stop time.
