When was photography invented?

Photography was born in 1826 or 1827, when the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce captured the earliest surviving permanent photograph, a rooftop view that required an exposure of about eight hours. In 1839 Louis Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype, the first commercially successful photographic process, which produced sharp images in minutes. Photography spread rapidly, changing art, journalism, and memory by letting people record real moments for the first time. Digital photography later replaced film in the modern era.