Nicéphore Niépce began serious work around 1816. He produced the first surviving permanent photograph (“View from the Window at Le Gras”) in 1826 or 1827 using a process he called heliography. It required an extremely long exposure (hours to days) of a static outdoor scene and was not practical for people or moving subjects. • Louis Daguerre developed the first practical, publicly announced process—the daguerreotype—which was revealed in 1839. Exposure times were still long at first (minutes) but improved enough for portraits. This is when photography became usable and spread. • William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotype process appeared around the same time (patented 1841) and allowed negatives that could make multiple prints. In short, there was no usable photographic camera in 1812 capable of recording people, ships, or events. The technology simply did not exist yet in a form that could produce permanent images of the kind we mean by “pictures.” britannica.com