US shoemaker is earliest born person capturedoncamera
I’ve
been spending a lot of time recently digitalising my old photographs and putting them on DVDs.
While doing this, I began to wonder, as the technology of photography changes so often, about the early days of the science, and would love to know who the first person to be captured on film was. – R.
The first ever photograph of a human being is known as Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 3. Arrondissement.
It is believed to have been taken some time between April 24 and May 5, 1838, by pioneering photographer Louis Daguerre.
The image was exposed for a full 10 minutes, which means anything, such as horse-drawn traffic, was moving too quickly to be captured.
In a corner of the image, there is a figure of a man having his shoes shine. He and the shoe shiner are the first people ever to have been photographed.
However, if you mean who is the earliest born human to appear in a photograph, that may be Hannah Gorby (nee Stilley) who was believed to have been born in 1746, and is thought to have been photographed in 1840.
Unfortunately, the evidence isn’t strong to prove that Hannah was the first born person to be so captured.
A more likely candidate is John Adams, a shoemaker who was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on January 21, 1745, and died in May, 1849.
He posed for a picture, probably around 1840, just two years into Queen Victoria’s 63-year reign.