5 ms·

The World's Oldest Photograph (2022)

75 points by kaycebasques 3y ago

timetraveller26 3y ago
I haven't read the article but I am pretty sure there are photos taken before 2022
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  The (2022) in the title refers to the date when the article was published. I didn't add that (2022) so it must have been the HN mods.
bambax 3y ago
> To create his photograph, Niépce treated a heated pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt, a naturally occurring asphalt with light-sensitive properties. > Historians suspect Neolithic peoples used the camera obscura effect in some of their monuments. The Ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi (470 to 390 BCE) made the earliest known written reference to the camera obscura A box with a small hole in one side, that has been known since pre-historic times, and a naturally occurring substance that's relatively easy to collect: that's all it takes to make a "photograph". But it was first tried in 1827. I often wonder how many inventions could have been made way earlier than they were, and why. Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? Or did catch on but were then completely forgotten? Many people think the Antikythera wasn't a one-of-a-kind but in fact a product, for example (probably made in the 2nd century BC). And the Pascaline, the calculator that Pascal invented in 1642 and actually made to work in 1645, was never commercially successful. The first calculator that enjoyed a modicum of commercial success appeared only in 1851, two hundred years later. Yet the people who had the scientific knowledge and manufacturing skills to build the Antikythera could have made the Pascaline (probably better, even). It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it.
- flipthefrog 3y ago
  The principles of photography were known earlier - Niepce's breakthrough was managing to fix the image so that it didnt fade. Photography could have existed much earlier if someone had figured out how to make fix
- aloe_falsa 3y ago
  The telescope could have been invented thousands of years ago - ancient Egyptians could polish lenses. Ditto for the sextant, optical telegraph, the printing press... > It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it. Or the modern era with inventions that are due to appear in thousands of years, but which we could easily replicate if we only knew where to look.
- OJFord 3y ago
  You'd be quite unlikely to stumble across this one though wouldn't you? I assume the theory came first in this case - and that may have built on centuries of study.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? There's probably a few like that but it's probably just more simply "people didn't have the spare time to be sitting around thinking and inventing unless it impacted on improving food access, etc. until society started to get easier."
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    I dunno, the ancients did an awful lot of sitting around. At least the rich ones.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Yeah, but there weren't very many of them. Each level of the office building I'm in right now is about half the Parthenon's floor area… and when the Parthenon was new, Athens was about a quarter million people of whom only about 10% were "free".
OJFord 3y ago
It's interesting to think that, by a combination of the grainy results and lengthy manual process involving plates and chemicals etc., photography was probably thought of so much more so as an art form, a method of rendering a picture (cf. painting, pressing), than we'd consider it today or even through C20 with less access to it (no camera phones) and it coming at greater cost & with delayed results (pre-digital).
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Steam engines with bronze pistons and cylinders could have been made.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Sorry, I don't understand the link between my comment and yours?
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Photography wasn't always thought of as art. https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/ https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Not fine art it says, and 'many artists and art critics still saw it as a threat', I think that's to my point. I held back from calling it 'easy painting' because I was sure someone would point out very early photography would've been as skilled and complicated, and really 'just different' rather than a quick or easy way of achieving the same.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xtiansimon 3y ago
I got to tell this story. It’s summer 2018 (plus or minus) and I’m walking to my client’s house in the SoHo area of Manhattan. I walk past a guy set up on Prince street making tintype portraits of people sitting on the bumper of his minivan. Stopped me in my tracks—wow. Of course I paid for a portrait. I couldn’t wait for it to dry, because I had an appointment, so he mailed it to me. I was telling all of my co-workers and minions to check out the experience. I hope some tried it out. The results are very special. The photographer is still doing pop-ups and can be found at a regular gig in Brooklyn.
- purpleflame1257 3y ago
  This sounds like a thing I would love to have. Can you please post a link?
  - deneb150 3y ago
    I see this guy around a lot, here's his instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinborucki/ https://www.instagram.com/justinborucki/
    - xtiansimon 3y ago
      That’s him
nocoiner 3y ago
I saw this in person one time at the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin. I don’t think I had made a special trip to see it - I think I was meeting a professor there, and they had it set up as an exhibit in the lobby - but naturally I had to check it out. It’s hard to describe, but thinking back on it, it was probably one of the most awe inspiring moments I’ve ever had. Literally looking through a window into the past and seeing a sunny French courtyard as it existed 200 years ago. It was very cool and, though I suppose not inherently that much more impressive than a portrait from a few decades later, something about seeing the actual physical artifact and knowing that I was looking at the same plate that had been struck by photons a couple centuries prior, etching that moment into metal - it was an incredible link into the past. Zelda reference not intended.
- userbinator 3y ago
  For comparison, the oldest surviving colour photo is a little more detailed, but the subject isn't quite as interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
  - civilitty 3y ago
    The first large collection of color photography is the most impressive of all: https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/ Taken 1905-1915 it shows life in Czarist Russia on the eve of revolution in full color and incredible detail.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      I wonder how much of the color is due to the modern process used to digitally combine the three monochrome plates. The overlap areas on the boundary seem quite modern in feel. The tartan bow image was taken by a similar process yet the image reproduced seems to be an image of an image. Do we no longer have the black and white plates as we do for the Russian ones? exit: we do still have the plates, but according to this, examining them reveals it wasn't actually a true 3 colour photo: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/6/2/54 https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/6/2/54 See particularly figure 7 for their modern re-enactment.
Finnucane 3y ago
It is interesting to note that the Daguerrotype--a difficult process--took off in part because it was made public and instructions on how to do it were widely available. When Fox Talbot invented the simpler paper negative process in 1841, his patents and demands for high royalties were a drag on acceptance.
- lalalandland 3y ago
  "In 1839, in exchange for lifetime pensions, the French government bought their photography technique and it became the first publicly available photo-taking system. This availability played a huge role in the development of photography as a social phenomenon." Maybe we need more of this approach to certain inventions and breakthroughs
cbm-vic-20 3y ago
Here's the oldest photograph that includes the image of a human, taken in 1837 or 1838: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple_(photograph) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple_(photograp...
- js2 3y ago
  I don't understand why that's considered the first over an image that was supposedly taken earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Neuf#Possible_first_photograph_of_human_being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Neuf#Possible_first_photo...
- dsubburam 3y ago
  Very nice photo--good composition! Amazing for a newbie's first shot (literally) at street photography. Until you think a bit and realize the photographer's probably seen a lot of "street paintings" and could have learnt good composition that way. Still, very impressive achievement artistically (on top of technically).

75 points by kaycebasques 3y ago

timetraveller26 3y ago

I haven't read the article but I am pretty sure there are photos taken before 2022

kaycebasques 3y ago
The (2022) in the title refers to the date when the article was published. I didn't add that (2022) so it must have been the HN mods.

bambax 3y ago

> To create his photograph, Niépce treated a heated pewter plate with bitumen of Judea, or Syrian asphalt, a naturally occurring asphalt with light-sensitive properties. > Historians suspect Neolithic peoples used the camera obscura effect in some of their monuments. The Ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi (470 to 390 BCE) made the earliest known written reference to the camera obscura A box with a small hole in one side, that has been known since pre-historic times, and a naturally occurring substance that's relatively easy to collect: that's all it takes to make a "photograph". But it was first tried in 1827. I often wonder how many inventions could have been made way earlier than they were, and why. Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? Or did catch on but were then completely forgotten? Many people think the Antikythera wasn't a one-of-a-kind but in fact a product, for example (probably made in the 2nd century BC). And the Pascaline, the calculator that Pascal invented in 1642 and actually made to work in 1645, was never commercially successful. The first calculator that enjoyed a modicum of commercial success appeared only in 1851, two hundred years later. Yet the people who had the scientific knowledge and manufacturing skills to build the Antikythera could have made the Pascaline (probably better, even). It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it.

flipthefrog 3y ago
The principles of photography were known earlier - Niepce's breakthrough was managing to fix the image so that it didnt fade. Photography could have existed much earlier if someone had figured out how to make fix
aloe_falsa 3y ago
The telescope could have been invented thousands of years ago - ancient Egyptians could polish lenses. Ditto for the sextant, optical telegraph, the printing press... > It would be fun to imagine Antiquity with many modern inventions in it. Or the modern era with inventions that are due to appear in thousands of years, but which we could easily replicate if we only knew where to look.
OJFord 3y ago
You'd be quite unlikely to stumble across this one though wouldn't you? I assume the theory came first in this case - and that may have built on centuries of study.
zimpenfish 3y ago
> Is it possible that they were, in fact, made, but simply didn't catch on? There's probably a few like that but it's probably just more simply "people didn't have the spare time to be sitting around thinking and inventing unless it impacted on improving food access, etc. until society started to get easier."
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  I dunno, the ancients did an awful lot of sitting around. At least the rich ones.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Yeah, but there weren't very many of them. Each level of the office building I'm in right now is about half the Parthenon's floor area… and when the Parthenon was new, Athens was about a quarter million people of whom only about 10% were "free".

OJFord 3y ago

It's interesting to think that, by a combination of the grainy results and lengthy manual process involving plates and chemicals etc., photography was probably thought of so much more so as an art form, a method of rendering a picture (cf. painting, pressing), than we'd consider it today or even through C20 with less access to it (no camera phones) and it coming at greater cost & with delayed results (pre-digital).

actionfromafar 3y ago
Steam engines with bronze pistons and cylinders could have been made.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Sorry, I don't understand the link between my comment and yours?
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
Photography wasn't always thought of as art. https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/ https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/
- OJFord 3y ago
  Not fine art it says, and 'many artists and art critics still saw it as a threat', I think that's to my point. I held back from calling it 'easy painting' because I was sure someone would point out very early photography would've been as skilled and complicated, and really 'just different' rather than a quick or easy way of achieving the same.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xtiansimon 3y ago

I got to tell this story. It’s summer 2018 (plus or minus) and I’m walking to my client’s house in the SoHo area of Manhattan. I walk past a guy set up on Prince street making tintype portraits of people sitting on the bumper of his minivan. Stopped me in my tracks—wow. Of course I paid for a portrait. I couldn’t wait for it to dry, because I had an appointment, so he mailed it to me. I was telling all of my co-workers and minions to check out the experience. I hope some tried it out. The results are very special. The photographer is still doing pop-ups and can be found at a regular gig in Brooklyn.

purpleflame1257 3y ago
This sounds like a thing I would love to have. Can you please post a link?
- deneb150 3y ago
  I see this guy around a lot, here's his instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinborucki/ https://www.instagram.com/justinborucki/
  - xtiansimon 3y ago
    That’s him

nocoiner 3y ago

I saw this in person one time at the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin. I don’t think I had made a special trip to see it - I think I was meeting a professor there, and they had it set up as an exhibit in the lobby - but naturally I had to check it out. It’s hard to describe, but thinking back on it, it was probably one of the most awe inspiring moments I’ve ever had. Literally looking through a window into the past and seeing a sunny French courtyard as it existed 200 years ago. It was very cool and, though I suppose not inherently that much more impressive than a portrait from a few decades later, something about seeing the actual physical artifact and knowing that I was looking at the same plate that had been struck by photons a couple centuries prior, etching that moment into metal - it was an incredible link into the past. Zelda reference not intended.

userbinator 3y ago
For comparison, the oldest surviving colour photo is a little more detailed, but the subject isn't quite as interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography
- civilitty 3y ago
  The first large collection of color photography is the most impressive of all: https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/prokudin-gorskii/ Taken 1905-1915 it shows life in Czarist Russia on the eve of revolution in full color and incredible detail.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    I wonder how much of the color is due to the modern process used to digitally combine the three monochrome plates. The overlap areas on the boundary seem quite modern in feel. The tartan bow image was taken by a similar process yet the image reproduced seems to be an image of an image. Do we no longer have the black and white plates as we do for the Russian ones? exit: we do still have the plates, but according to this, examining them reveals it wasn't actually a true 3 colour photo: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/6/2/54 https://www.mdpi.com/2571-9408/6/2/54 See particularly figure 7 for their modern re-enactment.

Finnucane 3y ago

It is interesting to note that the Daguerrotype--a difficult process--took off in part because it was made public and instructions on how to do it were widely available. When Fox Talbot invented the simpler paper negative process in 1841, his patents and demands for high royalties were a drag on acceptance.

lalalandland 3y ago
"In 1839, in exchange for lifetime pensions, the French government bought their photography technique and it became the first publicly available photo-taking system. This availability played a huge role in the development of photography as a social phenomenon." Maybe we need more of this approach to certain inventions and breakthroughs

cbm-vic-20 3y ago

Here's the oldest photograph that includes the image of a human, taken in 1837 or 1838: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple_(photograph) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_du_Temple_(photograp...

js2 3y ago
I don't understand why that's considered the first over an image that was supposedly taken earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Neuf#Possible_first_photograph_of_human_being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Neuf#Possible_first_photo...
dsubburam 3y ago
Very nice photo--good composition! Amazing for a newbie's first shot (literally) at street photography. Until you think a bit and realize the photographer's probably seen a lot of "street paintings" and could have learnt good composition that way. Still, very impressive achievement artistically (on top of technically).