The Story of Photography

Niépce creates the world's oldest surviving photograph, "View from the Window at Le Gras," using a pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea. The exposure took approximately 8 hours.

After struggling to sketch at Lake Como, Talbot imagines a device to capture images automatically — beginning the experiments that would lead to the negative-positive process and the calotype.

The French government announces the daguerreotype process to the world on 19 August 1839, making photography publicly available for the first time and causing worldwide sensation.

French photographers demonstrate the daguerreotype at the Lazzaretto in Malta — the first photograph ever taken on Maltese soil, noted as "perfectly successful" by local papers.

Hippolyte Bayard — who independently invented his own photographic process — organises the world's first public exhibition of photographs in Paris, displaying 30 images.