<P> Thomas Wedgwood (1771 - 1805) is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light - sensitive chemical . He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was advised to him as a light - sensitive substance . Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather as well as on paper moistened with a silver nitrate solution . Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed . It is unclear when Wedgwood's experiments took place . He may have started before 1790; James Watt wrote a letter to Thomas Wedgwood's father Josiah Wedgwood to thank him "for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments". This letter (now lost) is believed to have been written in 1790, 1791 or 1799 . In 1802 an account by Humphry Davy detailing Wedgwood's experiments was published in an early journal of the Royal Institution with the title An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver . Davy added that the method could be used for objects that are partly opaque and partly transparent to create accurate representations of for instance "the woody fibres of leaves and the wings of insects". He also found that solar microscope images of small objects were easily captured on prepared paper . Davy, apparently unaware or forgetful about Scheele's discovery, concluded that substances should be found to get rid of (or deactivate) the unexposed particles in silver nitrate or silver chloride "to render the process as useful as it is elegant". Wedgwood may have prematurely abandoned his experiments due to his frail and failing health . He died aged 34 in 1805 . </P> <P> Davy seems not to have continued the experiments . Although the journal of the small, infant Royal Institution probably reached its very small group of members, the article eventually must have been read by many more people . It was reviewed by David Brewster in the Edinburgh Magazine in December 1802, appeared in chemistry textbooks as early as 1803, was translated into French, and published in German in 1811 . Readers of the article may have been discouraged to find a fixer, because the highly acclaimed scientist Davy had already tried and failed . Apparently the article was not noted by Niépce or Daguerre, and by Talbot only after he had developed his own processes . </P> <P> 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 . 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 . </P> <P> In 1816 Nicéphore Niépce, using paper coated with silver chloride, succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives, darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light - fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing . Disenchanted with silver salts, he turned his attention to light - sensitive organic substances . </P>

When was the first black and white photo taken