Google Doodle honors photography pioneer Louis Daguerre
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Google put up one of its periodic Google Doodles Friday, a homage to Louis Daguerre on his 224th birthday –- and a reminder to web-surfing shutterbugs, photo-oglers and moving picture buffs everywhere to say a thank-you to photography’s most widely celebrated parent.
The first known photograph, “View from the Window at Le Gras,” actually was created by Daguerre’s fellow Frenchman, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, in 1827, when he coated a metal plate with bitumen and put it in the window of his country home -– creating a hazy silver and black image that he dubbed a “heliograph.”
Before his death in 1833, Niepce began collaborating with Daguerre, who built on his partner’s earlier work and, by 1839, had found a way to fix permanent images onto a plate (Englishman William Talbot was simultaneously making similar strides). Daguerre dubbed the result a daguerreotype -- represented by Google in its drawing, above -- launching a rage for taking, posing for, collecting and telling stories with photographic images that continues unabated.
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-- Mike Boehm
