13 Most Iconic Science Pictures Ever Taken

11. "View From The Window At Le Gras"

At first glance, this looks like nothing more than a smudgy mess, but this is actually the first photograph ever taken. Look a bit closer and you can make out the sloping roof of a building, a tower, a couple of windows and even a tree in the background.

The image was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, from the window of his family home. The exposure lasted a whopping eight hours and the effect was achieved by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura.

Just over a decade later, the first ever photograph of a human was taken, when a man having his shoes shined stayed still long enough to be captured by the lengthy exposure times.