Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

History of Photography

Photography, which is of particular interest to us here, was on a border between the old ways, which were really not that old, and the new ways. Photography really began in 1825 when Joseph Niépce invented a process for capturing reflect light on a sheet of metal covered with a tarlike material known as bitumen of Judea. When exposed to light the bitumen hardened. By washing away the material that was not hardened because it had received less light, Niépce was left with a surface that could be coated with ink and used to print pictures on paper. It was crude, but it worked.

About a decade later, Louis Daguerre discovered that he could create an image on silver by first treating it with iodine vapors, then exposing it to a reflected light image, developing the picture with fumes from heated mercury and fixing it in a bath of hyposulphite of soda, It produced excellent pictures but they had to be preserved in airtight glass frames filled with an inert gas such as nitrogen.