Claude Félix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor (26 July 1805,
Saint-Cyr, Saône-et-Loire – 7 April 1870,
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
) was a French
photographic
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
inventor. An army lieutenant and cousin of
Nicéphore Niépce
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (; 7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833), commonly known or referred to simply as Nicéphore Niépce, was a French inventor, usually credited with the invention of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he us ...
, he first experimented in 1847 with
negatives made with
albumen
Egg white is the clear liquid (also called the albumen or the glair/glaire) contained within an egg. In chickens it is formed from the layers of secretions of the anterior section of the hen's oviduct during the passage of the egg. It forms aro ...
on glass, a method subsequently used by the
Langenheim brothers for their
lantern slides. At his laboratory near Paris, Niépce de Saint-Victor worked on the fixation of natural photographic colour as well as the perfection of his cousin's
heliographic process for
photomechanical printing. His method of photomechanical printing, called
heliogravure
Photogravure (in French ''héliogravure'') is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate) an ...
, was published in 1856 in ''Traité pratique de gravure héliographique''. In the 1850s he also published frequently in ''La Lumière''.
Near-discovery of radioactivity
In 1804 the German chemist
Adolph Ferdinand Gehlen (1775-1815) had noticed that when a solution of uranium chloride in ether was exposed to sunlight, it quickly changed color (from bright yellow to green) and precipitated.
In the 1850s, Niépce de Saint-Victor was trying to develop color photography, using light-sensitive metal salts, including uranium salts. Beginning in 1857, long before
Henri Becquerel's famous serendipitous discovery of
radioactivity in 1896, Niépce de Saint-Victor observed that, even in complete darkness, certain salts could expose photographic emulsions. He soon realized that
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
salts were responsible for this anomalous phenomenon. (Photographers in France, England, and Germany soon confirmed Niepce's findings regarding uranium.) Niépce recognized that the "light" that was exposing his photographic plates was neither conventional phosphorescence nor fluorescence: the salts could expose photographic plates long after the salts had last been exposed to sunlight. Niépce's superior,
Michel Eugène Chevreul, recognized the phenomenon as a fundamental discovery (''"une découverte capitale"''), pointing out that uranium salts retained their power to expose photographic plates even after six months in the dark (''"encore actif six mois après son insolation"''). By 1861, Niépce stated frankly that uranium salts emitted some sort of radiation that was invisible to the human eye:
''Original'' : ''" … cette activité persistante … ne peut mème pas être de la phosphorescence, car elle ne durerait pas si longtemps, d'après les expériences de M. Edmond Becquerel; il est donc plus probable que c'est un rayonnement invisible à nos yeux, comme le croit M. Léon Foucault, … ."''
''Translation'' : " … this persistent activity … cannot be due to phosphorescence, for it .e., phosphorescencewould not last so long, according to the experiments of Mr. Edmond Becquerel; it is thus more likely that it is a radiation that is invisible to our eyes, as Mr. Léon Foucault
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (, ; ; 18 September 1819 – 11 February 1868) was a French physicist best known for his demonstration of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement ...
believes, … ."
Note especially that Niépce mentions "Edmond Becquerel", the father of Henri Becquerel, who would later be credited with the discovery of radioactivity. Indeed, in 1868, Edmond Becquerel published a book, ''La lumière: ses causes et ses effets'' (Light: its causes and its effects), in which he mentioned Niépce's findings; specifically, that objects that were coated with uranium nitrate could expose photographic plates in the dark.
[On the controversy about whether Henri Becquerel knew about Niépce de Saint-Victor's earlier discovery of radioactivity in uranium, see:
*
* Michel Genet (1995) "The discovery of uranic rays: A short step for Henri Becquerel but a giant step for science," ''Radiochimica Acta'' 70 / 71 : 3–12. This was part of a special issue of ''Radiochimica Acta'' which was reprinted in book form as: J. P. Adloff, ed., ''One Hundred Years After the Discovery of Radioactivity'' (Munich, Germany: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1996); see pages 3–12. Available (in part) on-line at:]
Google Books
* J. Fournier and P. Fournier (1990) "A. Niépce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870), M. E. Chevreul (1786-1889) et la découverte de la radioactivité," ''New Journal of Chemistry'', 14 (11) : 785–790.
* Fournier, Paul and Fournier, Josette (1999) "Hasard ou mémoire dans la découverte de la radioactivié?" hance or memory in the discovery of radioactivity? ''Revue d'Histoire des Sciences'', 52 (1) : 51–80. n FrenchAvailable at:
Persée (France)
* At about the same time that Henri Becquerel made his discovery, the English physicist Silvanus P. Thompson (1851-1916) independently observed that uranium salts emit a radiation that can penetrate opaque materials. See page 104 of: Thompson, Silvanus P. (1896
"On hyperphosphorescence,"
''Philosophical Magazine'', 42 : 103–107. (Thompson also mentions Niépce de Saint-Victor's findings.)
See also
*
Frederick Langenheim
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Niepce de Saint-Victor, Claude
1805 births
1870 deaths
People from Saône-et-Loire
19th-century French inventors