Claude Niépce

[1] Claude Félix Abel Niépce was born to Claudine Thérèse Augustine (née De Courteville) and Bernard Niepce, a lawyer, on 28 October 1764,[2] in Chalon-sur-Saône, in Burgundy.

His younger brother Nicéphore, who during the French Revolution had served in Sardinia and Italy, retired from the army in 1794 to recover from an eye disorder, and settled in Nice.

In 1801, they returned to oversee the family estate, Le Gras, in the village of Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, near Chalon and there they worked together on a number of projects, including the innovative hydraulic engine powered by a mixture of coal dust and lycopodium powder[3] – the Pyréolophore,[4] the world's first internal combustion boat motor – which they tested successfully on the nearby River Saône.

Over the next ten years, Claude remained in London, settled in Kew and suffered increasing mental illness which caused him to squander much of the family fortune chasing inappropriate business opportunities for the Pyréolophore.

[9][10] Independently, from 1816, Nicéphore experimented with the use of the light-sensitive resins, including the bitumen of Judea previously used as a fuel for the pyréolophore, to coat lithographs stones or plates intended for ink printing as a means of reproducing camera images.