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.
Camera obscura The earliest known written record of the camera obscura is to be found in Chinese writings called Mozi and dated to the 4th century BCE, traditionally ascribed to and named for Mozi (circa 470 BCE-circa 391 BCE), a Han Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohist School of Logic. In these writings it is explained how the inverted image in a "collecting-point" or "treasure house"[note 1] is inverted by an intersecting point (a pinhole) that collected the (rays of) light. Light coming from the foot of an illuminated person would partly be hidden below (strike below the pinhole) and partly form the top part of the image. Rays from the head would partly be hidden above (strike above the pinhole) and partly form the lower part of the image. This is a remarkably early correct description of the camera obscura; there are no other examples known that are dated before the 11th century.[11]