when was the first black and white photo taken
History of photography 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.[19] 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.