A World in Pics Derrick Thomas

Centuries of advances in chemistry and optics, including the invention of the camera obscura, set the stage for the world’s first photograph. In 1826, French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, took that photograph, titled View from the Window at Le Gras, at his family’s country home. Niépce produced his photo—a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window—by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill. This seen in history changed the future forever. The power of a photograph allows different people to communicate like never before sharing experiences and sights from anywhere to anyone. As time has gone on cameras have become more and more advanced allowing us to share in more vivid ways, without the power of cameras the world would be a much different and probable duller place. Cameras and pictures have done great things for the advancement of people.