Earliest known surviving heliographic engraving, 1825, printed from a metal plate made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with his "heliographic process".^[1] The plate was exposed under an ordinary engraving and copied it by photographic means. This was a step towards first permanent photograph from nature, taken with a camera obscura, in 1826.

Heliography (in French, héliographie) is the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1822,^[1] which he used to make the earliest known permanent photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras (c. 1826). The process used bitumen (an asphalt like substance)^[2], as a coating on glass or metal, which hardened in relation to exposure to light. When the plate was washed with oil of lavender, only the hardened image area remained.

The word has also been used to refer to other phenomena: for description of the sun (cf geography), for photography in general, for signalling by heliograph (a device less commonly called a heliotrope or helio-telegraph), and for photography of the sun.^[3]

The abbreviations héliog. or héliogr., found on old reproductions, may stand for the French word héliogravure, and can then refer to any form of photogravure.

References[link]

Other Sources[link]

• Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "heliography". Accessed 10 December 2007.
• Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin. The First Photograph. Accessed 10 December 2007.
• An Improved Method in the Art of Signalling for Military & Scientific Purposes (1887). Accessed 1 June 2008.

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