ABSTRACT
A popular parlour game in the early nineteenth century, derived from a simple chemical experiment, involved attaching objects like flowers and leaves to pieces of paper treated with silver salts. When the paper was exposed to sunlight, the objects left an outline on the paper, although the image quickly disappeared because there was no means of fixing it. Joseph Niepce discovered how to do this, using sunlight on silver chloride to inscribe a design on metal automatically. According to Sadoul, Niepce, who was not a very a good artist, came to this idea through the difficulty he experienced in obtaining lithographic stones, which induced him to try replacing the stone with metal (Sadoul, vol. 1, p. 26). But to obtain results required extremely long exposures. The photograph he submitted to the Royal Society in 1827 needed eight hours, and two years later economic necessity forced Niepce into partnership with Louis Daguerre, who was carrying out similar experiments with the object of improving an already profitable business in designing dioramas. It was Daguerre alone who achieved the breakthrough, after Niepce’s death, though the technique he achieved was of little use to him for the purpose for which he originally intended it.
