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First Permanent Image
French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce uses a camera obscura to burn a permanent image of the countryside at his Le Gras, France, estate onto a chemical-coated pewter plate. He names his technique "heliography," meaning "sun drawing." The black-and-white exposure takes eight hours and fades significantly, but an image is still visible on the plate today. -
first photo of war
during the Mexican-American War, daguerreotypist Charles J. Betts follows the American Army to Veracruz, Mexico, and, according to an advertisement, offers to photograph "the dead and wounded." Dozens of anonymous daguerreotypes are also taken of troop movements and American officers. The first official war photos, though, are of the Crimean War from 1855 to 1856. The British government sends several photographers to document the war, but because of his meticulous preparations, Roger Fenton, a B -
first colour photo
the enormously influential Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell creates a rudimentary color image by superimposing onto a single screen three black-and-white images each passed through three filters—red, green, and blue. His photo of a multicolored ribbon is the first to prove the efficacy of the three-color method, until then just a theory, and sets the stage for further color innovation, particularly by the Lumißre brothers in France. -
first action photo
English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, using new emulsions that allow nearly instantaneous photography, begins taking photograph sequences that capture animals and humans in motion. His 1878 photo series of a galloping horse, created with 12 cameras each outfitted with a trip wire, helps settle a disagreement over whether at any time in a horse's gait all four hooves leave the ground. (They do.) It also causes a popular stir about the potential of cameras to study movement. Muybridge goes on t -
first under water picture
chthyologist William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin use an Autochrome camera and a raft full of explosive magnesium flash powder to illuminate the shallows of Florida's Dry Tortugas and make the first undersea color photographs. The photos, which show reef scenes with fish, are published in the January 1927 -
first high speed image
Dr. Harold "Doc" Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, works with National Geographic to perfect high-speed stroboscopic photography, freezing on film the rapid movements of nature that elude the eye. National Geographic publishes several of the images, including bullets frozen in mid-flight and stilled hummingbird wings. Nicknamed "Papa Flash," Edgerton's techniques are later used to illuminate the ocean's deepest abysses. -
ocean eye invented
Frustrated by the inability to shoot wide-angle photos using currently available underwater housings, National Geographic photographer Bates Littlehales works with the National Geographic photo lab and the Photogrammetry Corporation to design a better model. The result, essentially a transparent Plexiglas bubble with a set of handles and controls, revolutionizes underwater photography. Dubbed OceanEye, the new housing can accommodate a camera with a bulky motor drive as well as a wide range of l -
first all colour image
fter decades of pioneering color photography technology, National Geographic magazine introduces a new era in February 1962, becoming the first major American periodical to print an all-color issue. The magazine goes on to publish more color in its editorial pages throughout 1962 than any other major magazine in the country. -
first still digital camera
Kodak releases the first commercially available, professional digital camera in 1991. This device, extremely expensive and marketed to professional photographers, uses a Nikon F-3 camera body fitted with a digital sensor. Over the next five years, several companies come out with more affordable models, and today, the market is overwhelmed with thousands of digital still camera models. -
first digital camera trap
National Geographic photographers had been using camera traps to take pictures of wildlife for years. But in 2006, George Steinmetz becomes the first to do so using a digital setup. The shoot, meticulously arranged at a watering hole in the Sonoran Desert, involves wired and wireless strobes, a digital SLR camera, and an infrared remote camera trap. The quarry: a close-up of the elusive North American mountain lion. Mountain lions (and various other animals) begin showing up quickly, but it tak
