Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore, << nyehps, zhoh ZEHF nee say FAWR >> (1765-1833), a French scientist, invented the first photographic technique, heliography. Niépce began experimenting in 1816. He succeeded in making a crude photograph of a courtyard in 1826. He sensitized a metal plate with bitumen (a dark tarlike substance) and exposed it for eight hours. This plate, the world’s first photograph, is in the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas at Austin (see Photography (History)). 
In 1829, Niépce became the partner of L. J. M. Daguerre, a French stage designer and painter who introduced the first popular form of photography. Daguerre based his research for the daguerreotype process for making photographs on Niépce’s technique of heliograph. Niépce was born in Chalon-sur-Saone, France, on March 7, 1765. He died on July 5, 1833.
