Retracing the Chemistry of the First Photograph

StarEmperor writes: "CNN has this article about experts trying to determine how the world's oldest known photograph (1826!) was produced." Even though the basic process is known, the details of how it was produced are lost.

Comments

Re:Good Chemistry

[Paul Neubauer]

Ok, self-followup isn't good form, but self-correction is.

A bit of web searching find that the fellow was rather secretive about the process and was looking to sell the idea. So it's not too surprising no records of the process have been found. He did, however, team up with Daguerre for a bit later, so perhaps there was some degree of not caring about one process too much when searching for a better one.

Turin shroud

[Yarn]

Some people consider this to be the oldest surviving photograph. There was a fashion in Italy where artists used a 'camera obscura' to help them draw accurately.

Photoreactive chemicals were known (could be derived from seaweed and silver). It would be a simple step to think of putting this chemical on canvas and "photographing" a statue or something immobile.