43 Of The Oldest Surviving Pics That Give Us A Glimpse Into The Past

The birth of photography is this grainy, abstract-looking image, which is the world's oldest surviving photograph. Taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1826, this "heliograph" required an exposure time so incredibly long (at least eight hours and possibly several days) that the sun had time to illuminate buildings on both sides of the courtyard. The result is this ghostly but monumental view from the window of his estate at Le Gras, the very first permanent image ever captured with a camera.

On September 2, 1882, photographer William N. Jennings achieved a scientific and artistic first by successfully capturing a bolt of lightning on camera. This Philadelphia photograph was a major breakthrough, as it allowed the fleeting, branching structure of an electrical discharge to be seen and studied for the very first time.

The world's first "selfie" was taken in 1839 by a Philadelphia lamp manufacturer and amateur chemist named Robert Cornelius. To capture this image, Cornelius had to set up his camera at the back of his family's store, uncover the lens, and then run into the frame. He then had to sit perfectly still for well over a minute before running back to cover the lens again.

In an era when long exposure times turned any moving object into a ghostly blur, capturing the sheer power of Niagara Falls was a monumental photographic challenge. This 1858 view from the Canadian side is a landmark image precisely because it was one of the first successful attempts to photograph such rapid, intense motion. The ability to freeze the cascading water, even partially, marked a significant technical step forward for the young art form.

An expedition from Washington University celebrated New Year's Day in 1889 by photographing a total solar eclipse from Norman, California. The resulting image is actually a skillfully made composite, created by taking several pictures at varying exposures. By overlaying these different photographic plates, the team was able to capture the full, stunning detail of the sun's corona in a single print.

Taking a photograph underwater in the 19th century was an immense technical ordeal, first successfully accomplished by French biologist Louis Boutan in 1899. To achieve this, he not only had to design a bulky, custom-built waterproof housing for his camera, but he also had to invent the first underwater flash. This dangerous contraption involved an alcohol lamp and magnesium powder, creating a controlled explosion to illuminate the murky depths of the Mediterranean Sea long enough for the slow exposure.

This striking portrait of Dorothy Catherine Draper is not only the earliest surviving photograph of a woman, but it is also one of the oldest and clearest human portraits in existence. Taken by her brother, the scientist John William Draper, in either late 1839 or early 1840, the daguerreotype is a remarkable technical achievement for its time. To achieve such a well-defined image, Dorothy had to sit perfectly still for a 65-second exposure, her face powdered with flour to enhance the contrast.

On August 28, 1884, near Howard, South Dakota, a local farmer and amateur photographer captured this incredible image, which is widely considered to be the oldest known photograph of a tornado. In an era of cumbersome and slow photographic equipment, managing to set up and successfully take a picture of such a fleeting and dangerous weather event was an astonishing and rare achievement.

On July 20, 1976, humanity got its first-ever look from the surface of another planet. This historic image was transmitted by the Viking 1 lander just moments after it successfully touched down on Mars. The photograph, showing the spacecraft's own footpad resting on the reddish, alien terrain, marked a monumental achievement for NASA and provided a stunning, firsthand view of the Red Planet.

The first person to successfully photograph the moon did so from a rooftop in New York City. On March 26, 1840, scientist John W. Draper pointed his camera skyward from the observatory at New York University and captured the lunar surface using the daguerreotype process. The resulting image, while blurry and marked by time, holds the incredible distinction of being the very first astronomical photograph ever taken.

On April 2, 1845, French physicists Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault pointed a camera at our star and, using a then-blazing 1/60th of a second exposure, created the first detailed photograph of the sun. The resulting daguerreotype was a monumental achievement in scientific imaging, as it provided the first-ever photographic proof of sunspots on the solar surface.

French inventor Louis Ducos du Hauron was a crucial pioneer in the long quest for color photography, and this 1877 landscape is one of his earliest surviving works. Taken in his native region, the view of Agen, France, prominently features the Saint-Caprais Cathedral and provides a rare, almost painterly glimpse of the 19th-century world in color.

Taken by Louis Daguerre himself in 1838, this view of a Paris street is famous for accidentally capturing the very first photograph of a human being. Because the daguerreotype process required an extremely long exposure time of around 10 minutes, all the bustling traffic of the Boulevard du Temple became an invisible blur. However, one man who stopped for a shoe shine remained still long enough to be etched into the image, a lone, ghostly figure who unknowingly became the first person ever photographed.

Unlike earlier war photographs that focused on portraits or the aftermath, this 1870 image from the Battle of Sedan is a groundbreaking exception, believed to be the first ever taken during an active battle. From a precarious position among the French defenders, the photographer captured the chilling sight of a line of Prussian troops advancing directly toward them. This shot marked a pivotal moment, moving war photography from the relative safety of the camp into the heart of the conflict itself.

Titled "Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It," this image holds the title of the world's first successful aerial photograph. Taken in 1860 by photographer James Wallace Black from a hot-air balloon tethered 2,000 feet above the city, it provided a stunning and completely unprecedented bird's-eye view of the Boston landscape.

On April 10, 1848, William Edward Kilburn captured this sprawling view of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common in London. The photograph is significant as it's one of the earliest images of a large-scale political protest. The Chartist movement was a working-class campaign for political reform, and this photograph documents one of their most famous rallies, offering a rare visual record of a moment when thousands gathered to demand the right to vote.

The journey of Japan's earliest surviving photograph is as remarkable as the image itself. This 1857 daguerreotype portrait of Lord Shimazu Nariakira was so highly esteemed that it was treated as an object of worship after his passing. The precious image then vanished entirely, disappearing for a full century before its chance rediscovery in a warehouse in 1975.

Among the earliest surviving photographs taken in Greece, this 1842 image captures the colossal ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens. From the very beginning, ancient monuments were a favorite subject for photographers, who saw the new medium as the perfect tool to document the world's historical treasures. This photograph is now a valuable record in its own right, showing the state of the famous temple and its surrounding landscape nearly two centuries ago.

On August 23, 1966, humanity received a breathtaking new perspective on its place in the cosmos. Transmitted by the Lunar Orbiter I spacecraft as it swung around the Moon, this black-and-white image was the very first view of Earth captured from the lunar vicinity. The photograph, showing a crescent Earth hanging in the blackness of space above the barren lunar surface, was a stunning technical feat that forever changed how we see our home planet.

French photographer Auguste Salzmann undertook a mission to Jerusalem with the specific goal of creating a photographic record of its ancient ruins. In 1854, he captured this detailed view of the Tomb of St. James in the Valley of Josaphat. The image was then published two years later as a salted paper print, showcasing how photography was becoming a vital new tool for archaeological documentation.

In 1842, Prince Albert sat for what would become the earliest surviving photograph of a British royal. The portrait was taken at a studio in Brighton using the daguerreotype process and was commissioned by the prince himself as a personal item for Queen Victoria. Upon receiving the cased, intimate image, the Queen recorded her simple but positive review in her journal, noting, "Saw the photographs which are quite good."

In a clever 1855 marketing campaign for their struggling new studio, the photographer Nadar and his brother hired the mime Charles Deburau for a series of expressive portraits. Deburau posed as the character Pierrot, a figure whose now-famous look of a white face and black skullcap was actually an invention of his father. This photograph, part of the "heads of expression" series, became an enormous popular success and helped launch the brothers' careers.

Before he even announced his groundbreaking invention to the world, Louis Daguerre created this image, an 1837 still life titled "The Artist's Studio." The carefully arranged collection of plaster casts and artwork wasn't just a random snapshot; it was a technical demonstration. This photograph served as one of the earliest and most successful examples of his new daguerreotype process, proving its remarkable ability to capture fine detail, texture, and the subtle play of light.

After being guided to the overgrown ruins in 1911 by locals, explorer Hiram Bingham III returned the following year to begin clearing the site, and it was then that he captured this historic photograph. The image, showing only a portion of the now-famous Inca citadel, represents the very first time Machu Picchu was systematically documented on film. It was through these early photographs that Bingham introduced the stunning "lost city" to the rest of the world.

To settle a popular 19th-century debate, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was hired by railroad magnate Leland Stanford to answer a single question: does a galloping horse ever have all four hooves off the ground at once? In 1878, after years of experimentation, Muybridge lined a racetrack with multiple cameras, each triggered by a tripwire. The resulting sequence of stop-motion photographs not only definitively proved that horses do go airborne, but when viewed in rapid succession, they also created the world's first motion picture.

The world's first durable color photograph was created in 1861 not with color film, but with a brilliant scientific demonstration. Guided by the theories of physicist James Clerk Maxwell, three separate black-and-white photographs of this tartan ribbon were taken, each through a red, green, or blue filter. The three resulting images were then turned into slides and projected onto a screen using their corresponding colored lights. When perfectly overlapped, they recombined to form a single, full-color image, proving the three-color method that is now the foundation for virtually all modern color photography and digital displays.

This haunting image of barricades on a Paris street is believed to be the first-ever photograph of a news event in progress. Taken during the fatal June Days Uprising of 1848, the photograph reveals a strange limitation of early photography. The long exposure time required for the daguerreotype process meant that the chaos of the actual fighting was never captured. As a result, the image is an eerie and ghost-like record of the aftermath, showing the stage of a violent conflict with none of its actors visible.

This 1847 photograph captures one of the most important moments in medical history: the early use of ether as an anesthetic. The daguerreotype from Boston shows patient Edward Gilbert Abbott about to undergo a procedure without the conscious terror that had defined surgery for centuries. It's a quiet, historic image that documents the very beginning of painless operations.

This rare and historic photograph, taken around 1853, offers one of the earliest known photographic glimpses into a Native American community. The image shows a small Cheyenne village at Big Timbers, in what is now Colorado, with four large tipis situated near a wooded area. It is a quiet but invaluable document, capturing a moment of everyday life before the major conflicts and forced relocations that would drastically change the American West.

This 1844 portrait shows Louis Daguerre, the artist and inventor who gave his name to the first commercially successful photographic process. After partnering with the original inventor of photography, Nicéphore Niépce, Daguerre refined the technique into the much faster and clearer daguerreotype method. His public announcement of the invention in 1839 sparked a global sensation, effectively launching the age of photography.

Believed to be the world's very first news photograph, this 1847 daguerreotype captures a dramatic and immediate event: a man being arrested in France. While the specific details of the crime have been lost to history, the image's purpose has not. It was created to document a live moment for public information, reportedly appearing later in an illustrated history of the revolutions that would sweep the country the following year.

This dramatic 1908 photograph captures the immediate, tangled aftermath of the world's first fatal airplane crash. The experimental Wright Flyer, being demonstrated for the U.S. Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, went down when a propeller shattered mid-flight. While Orville Wright, who was piloting, survived with serious injuries, his passenger, Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, did not, tragically becoming the first person to perish in a powered aircraft accident.

This seemingly simple image of a haystack, captured in 1844, is a landmark in the history of publishing. It was one of the key photographs featured in William Henry Fox Talbot's book, The Pencil of Nature. The publication was a groundbreaking achievement, as it was the very first book illustrated with photographic prints to be sold commercially to the public.

This 1844 calotype, titled "Edinburgh Ale," is less a formal portrait and more a candid moment shared between friends. In the photograph, pioneering photographer David Octavius Hill (right) joins writer James Ballantine and Dr. George Bell for a drink. The scene captures the social and collaborative nature of early photography, right down to the bottle of potent Edinburgh ale on the table, which one contemporary described as a powerful brew that "almost glued the lips of the drinker together."

This 1848 daguerreotype provides a quiet, rural view of what was then known as the Old Bloomingdale Road, a street that would eventually become the bustling, world-famous Broadway. The photograph captures a tranquil New York estate at a time when much of upper Manhattan was still countryside.

In this 1859 daguerreotype, a blacksmith is captured mid-swing, demonstrating the craft of forging a horseshoe. The image is notable not just for its depiction of skilled labor but also for the person who took it. The photograph was created by Sarah L. Judd, one of the pioneering women who operated their own photography studios in the earliest days of the medium.

The question "What would happen if computers could look at pictures?" led directly to the creation of the world's first digital image in 1957. Computer pioneer Russell Kirsch and his team developed a drum scanner to feed visual information into a programmable computer. For their first test subject, Kirsch scanned a photograph of his infant son, Walden, creating a grainy, 176x176 pixel black-and-white image that marked the very beginning of digital photography.

While the exact date is debated, this 1843 daguerreotype holds the distinction of being the first surviving photograph of a United States president. The portrait shows a stern and elderly John Quincy Adams, captured nearly 15 years after he had left the White House. It's a historic and remarkably humanizing image, offering a direct visual connection to one of America's founding-era statesmen.

Thought to have been taken around 1846, this daguerreotype is the earliest known photograph of Abraham Lincoln. It captures a 37-year-old Lincoln as a young, clean-shaven congressman-elect from Illinois, years before the beard and heavy burdens of the presidency would famously transform his appearance. This portrait offers a rare glimpse of the future leader as a frontier lawyer on the cusp of his national political career.

Taken just one day after the fort's surrender, this photograph from April 14, 1861, captures the direct aftermath of the event that ignited the U.S. Civil War. The image shows the Confederate flag flying over Fort Sumter, marking the start of a conflict that would become one of the first to be extensively documented by photography. Created by Alma A. Pelot, it's a stereoscopic photograph, meaning it was designed to be viewed in 3D, offering a more immersive look at this pivotal moment in American history.

Taken during the Mexican-American War, this 1847 daguerreotype is one of the earliest photographs ever taken of an armed conflict. It captures a calm moment amidst the violence, showing American General John E. Wool and his staff making their formal entry into the city of Saltillo after its capture. The image serves as a powerful early example of photography's new role in documenting not just battles, but the significant political movements of war.

Taken by Louis Daguerre himself in 1838, this view of a Paris street is famous for accidentally capturing the very first photograph of a human being. Because the daguerreotype process required an extremely long exposure time (likely over ten minutes) all the bustling traffic of the Boulevard du Temple became an invisible blur.

Although the original photograph has been lost to time, William Henry Harrison holds the distinction of being the first sitting U.S. president to have his picture taken. That daguerreotype was made shortly after his 1841 inauguration, just before his untimely passing a month later. The image that survives today is a copy made in 1850 and is a photograph of a painted portrait, serving as a historical placeholder for the missing original.