The worlds first succesfull photograph was taken with a camera obscura by Niépce in 1826 on a pewter plate containing a high concentration of tin alloyed with lead, copper and iron.
The image shows the view from a window in his study in the village of St.-Loup-des-Varennes, France.
Time of exposure was 8 hours.
Nicephore Niepce: View from window, 1826
A film of asphalt, dissolved in lavenderoil, hardened where it was exposed to light.
The dark parts of the image remained soluble and could be washed off with a mixture of turpentine and lavenderoil.
The result was a fixed positive image of asphalt on tin. Niépce called this method "Heliograph" (sundrawing).
Niépce demonstrated that photography was possible, but to show that it was also practical required another person:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851). Daguerre went on to develop a new fixing method with mercury vapors, which enabled him to produce a photograph in 20 minutes instead of eight hours. Although he credited Niepce as co-developer of the photographic process, his images were always known as daguerreotypes.
Nicephore Niepce:
As there is less light inside the box the image becomes clearer and its outlines as well as the dark and light patches are more sharply defined. You can see this if you look at the roof of the pigeon house, the angles of its walls, the casement window of which the lattices are visible, the glass even seeming transparent in some places. In short, the paper retains an exact imprint of the coloured image, and if everything cannot be seen distinctly is because the image represented here being very small, this object appears as it would if seen from very far away.
The pigeon house being depicted in reverse, the barn, or rather its roof, is on the left instead of on the right. That white mass to the right of the pigeon house above the fence, which is not very clear but just as it appears on the reflected image, is the de Beurré-blanc pear tree, which is much further away and that spot on the upper part of the tree is a patch of light visible between the branches.
The shadow on the right side indicates the roof of the bake house which appears lower than it should, because the boxes (camera obscura) are placed about 5 feet from the ground of the room. Finally, my dear friend, those little white streaks over the barn are branches of the trees in the orchard of which one catches a glimpse and which are reflected on the "retina". The effect would be more striking if, as I have told you, or as I don't need to tell you, the order of the dark and light parts could be reversed.
Photographic links
Some thoughts on the worlds first photograph
History of photography
Daguerreian society