The first photograph: View from the Window at Le Gras
The oldest photo needed hours, maybe days, of exposure
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Around 1827 Nicéphore Niépce photographed the rooftops outside his window, the oldest surviving camera photograph. The image formed on a bitumen-coated plate. Sunlight falls on buildings on both sides, so the exposure was put at eight hours; recent experiments suggest several days.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 15 years earlier
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 1 year later
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 12 years later
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 12 years later
Africa
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — 23 years earlier
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — 22 years earlier
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 8 years later
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 20 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 12 years earlier
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — 10 years earlier
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 8 years earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 4 years later
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 12 years later
Americas
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase — 24 years earlier
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — 10 years earlier
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — 5 years earlier
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 8 years later
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — 11 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 24 years later
Alive at the time
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 78)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (aged 57)
- Simón Bolívar (aged 44)
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 28)
- Charles Darwin (aged 18)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 18)
- Karl Marx (aged 9)
- Queen Victoria (aged 8)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 6)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 67)