It would take a full day's worth of daylight to expose the plate. We have no record of exactly what Nicephore did to pass the time that day, but given his strong interest in the draisienne, a two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled pre-bicycle, better known as a "hobby horse" or "dandy horse," and made entirely of wood, it's likely Nicephore took a ride.

After a long wait, like waiting for the latest Battlestar Galactica episode to download via BitTorrent, it was time for Nicephore to make nice to his pewter plate. He got off his hobby horse, climbed back up the stairs, removed the plate from the camera obscura, and washed it with a healthy mix of lavendar oil and white petroleum. This dissolved away the parts of the bitumen which hadn't been hardened by the light of the day.

The result was what is widely considered the first permanent, direct, positive picture, shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B


It's not much worse than some of our modern-day camera phone pictures. Roll over picture for a larger image.

If you look carefully, you can see the outbuildings, courtyard, trees, and surrounding landscape as Nicephore saw it through his window, all the way back in 1826. And the rest is history.

And that's the story of the first photograph.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.