<P> French balloonist / professor / inventor Jacques Charles is believed to have captured fleeting negative photograms of silhouettes on light sensitive paper at the start of the 19th century , prior to Westwood . Charles died in 1823 without documenting the process , but purportedly demonstrated it in his lectures at the Louvre . It was not publicized until François Arago mentioned it at his introduction of the details of the Daguerreotype to the world in 1839 . He later wrote that the first idea of fixing the images of the camera obscura or the solar microscope with chemical substances belonged to Charles . Later historians probably only built on Arago 's information and much later the unsupported year 1780 was attached to it . Since Arago indicated the first years of the 19th century and a date prior to Wedgwood 's process published in 1802 , this would mean that Charles ' demonstrations took place in 1800 or 1801 - assuming Arago was this accurate almost 40 years later . </P>
when was the first black and white photo taken
at the start of the 19th century