Stone to Silicon

Communication · 1839

Photography

Daguerre and Talbot fix images made by light itself, and memory gets an objective record.

Building on Niepce's 1826 heliograph, Louis Daguerre's daguerreotype was announced in 1839, the same year William Henry Fox Talbot described his negative-positive process. Photography transformed science, journalism, art and personal memory, and its chemistry led to cinema.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 3

What it led to 7