The World's Oldest Photograph (2022)

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.

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_(photograp...

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).

> 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.

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.

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.

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