Heliography

This article is about the photographic process. For other uses, see Heliography (disambiguation).

Earliest known surviving heliographic engraving, 1825, printed from a metal plate made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with his "heliographic process". The plate was exposed under an ordinary engraving and copied it by photographic means. Heliography was also used to capture a scene directly from nature with a camera.

Heliography (in French, héliographie) is the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1822, which he used to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827). The process used Bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt, as a coating on glass or metal. It hardened in proportion to its exposure to light. When the plate was washed with oil of lavender, only the hardened areas remained.

The word has also been used to refer to other phenomena: for description of the sun (cf. geography), for photography in general, for signalling by heliograph (a device less commonly called a heliotrope or helio-telegraph), and for photography of the sun.

The abbreviations héliog. or héliogr., found on old reproductions, may stand for the French word héliogravure, and can then refer to any form of photogravure.

References

Other Sources

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "heliography". Accessed 10 December 2007.
• Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin. The First Photograph. Accessed 10 December 2007.
• An Improved Method in the Art of Signalling for Military & Scientific Purposes (1887). Accessed 1 June 2008.