One of the world's very first photographs. Taken in 1839, it is a picture of Port Ripetta, Rome in Italy.

"The birth of photography happened in 1826 when a French scientist, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, put a plate coated with bitumen (an asphalt used in ancient times as a cement or mortar) in a camera obscura. He put the camera obscura facing his house for eight hours and made a photograph! It is the earliest camera photograph that we still have today. Here is a photograph of that first photograph!

Niepce began sharing his findings with Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, and artist who owned a theatre in Paris. They became partners three years later. Daguerre's most important discovery came in 1835, two years after Niepce died. Daguerre found that the chemical compound silver iodide was much more sensitive to light than Niepce's bitumen. He put a copper plate coated with silver iodide in a camera obscura, exposed this plate to light for a short time, then to fumes of mercury and an image appeared! One problem remained, the image darkened over time. Two years later he solved this problem by washing away remaining silver iodide with a solution of warm water and table salt.

Daguerre's process, which he named the daguerreotype, was announced to the world on January 7, 1839. Half a year later the French government gave Daguerre and Niepce's son, Isidore, lifetime pensions in exchange for all rights to their invention. The daguerreotype was to become France's gift to the world."

Source: The Amazing History Of Photography