Joseph Niecephore Niépce made the first (known) photograph with a camera in 1826, a view of his farm buildings. But there is an earlier image, a contact print of a drawing and it’s from a year earlier.

The ‘photograph’ is of a drawing of a boy leading a horse. Sotheby’s, who sold it to the French government in 2002, listed it as “the earliest recorded image created by photographic means.”

How was it made? Not with silver salts: “Developing the plate with oil of lavender and white petroleum produced a negative of the plate. The image was then etched into the metal producing the plate”

It was not made with a camera obscura like the later picture, but it was made with light sensitive materials plus the action of light. It’s a photogram, and they’re photographs right?

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