Two centuries ago, a French inventor gazed out of his window in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes and captured a defining moment in the history of science (not to mention art). As the sunlight poured down on the rooftops ahead, Nicéphore Niépce set up a peculiar contraption on his windowsill: a darkened box holding a pewter plate coated with a light-sensitive goo. Then he simply let it sit. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

After opening a hole in the box and leaving the plate exposed to the outside world for eight hours, a ghostly image of the view in front slowly emerged. For the first time, light had etched a clear, permanent image onto a film. The result – titled View from the Window at Le Gras – is widely considered to be the

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