Nicéphore Niépce

Nicéphore Niépce got married to Agnes Romero in 1794 during his stay in Nice. The couple had a son named Isidore who formed a partnership with Daguerre after his father's death.

Under financial difficulties, his brother Claude had traveled to Paris and then to England to raise money to extend the patent of the Pyréolophore, but ended up squandering much of the family fortune. Nicéphore visited him in London in 1827, one year before his death, only to find him in a state of delirium.

By the time Nicéphore died of a stroke on July 5, 1833 none of his inventions were officially acknowledged. He was so destitute at the time of his death that the municipality had to finance his grave in the cemetery of Saint-Loup de Varennes.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was born on March 7, 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, to Claude Niépce, a King counselor and deposits collector for Chalonnais, and Claude Barault. His family, which also consisted of his older brother Claude, younger brother Bernard, and sister Claudine-Antoinette Niépce, had to flee the French Revolution due to suspicion of royalist sympathies.

In 1786, Joseph entered the Oratorian Brothers College in Angers to pursue his passion for physics and chemistry, and adopted the name 'Nicéphore' in honour of Saint Nicephorus, the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople. He achieved rapid success in studying science and the experimental method, and was appointed a professor at the college soon after completing his graduation.

Nicéphore Niépce enlisted in the National Guard in Chalon-sur-Saône in 1788, but joined the Revolutionary Army as a staff officer under Napoleon in 1792, spending years in Italy and on the island of Sardinia. He had to leave the army in 1794 due to ill health and became the Administrator of the district of Nice, but was reportedly forced to resign the following year due to lack of popularity.

In 1797, he travelled to Sardinia with his family and his brother Claude, who had joined him in Nice, a trip which is believed to have inspired the two brothers to experiment with photography. They undertook their first projects as inventors back in Nice in 1798 and developed a new combustion engine based on the principle of air expansion during an explosion.

Along with his family and his brother, he returned to his homeland in 1801 to continue their scientific research and reunited with his mother, younger brother and sister. Taking charge of their family estates from their mother, who managed those since the death of their father in 1785, they began living independently as wealthy gentlemen-farmers, raising beets and producing sugar.

The Niépce brothers were the first to build and patent the world's first internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore, in 1807, using controlled dust explosions of Lycopodium powder. The machine was first installed on a boat that ran on the river Saône, which was followed by another engine with a fuel injection system ten years later.

Entering a competition opened by the imperial government in 1807, the two brothers made improvements to the original Marly machine located in Marly-le-Roi to pump water from the Seine river to the Palace of Versailles. They made several changes to the model and were able to lift water 11 feet with a stream drop of 4 feet 4 inches, but in December 1809 the task was given to engineer Périer.

Nicéphore Niépce is credited as a pioneer in the field of photography for his invention of heliography using a camera obscura. In 1822, he used this process to create the world's first permanent photographic image, an engraving of Pope Pius VII.