I'd like to talk about photography as an art form. But, um, before we delve into the artistic aspects of photography, I want to talk about the birth of photography. What I mean is... I want you to know how this technology developed. Unlike other art forms, like, say, painting or sculpture, photography is rather new. In fact, the very first permanent photograph wasn't created until 1826 by a French scientist named Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. And as we'll learn today, this breakthrough was the result of several centuries' worth of research. OK, in ancient times, many scientists explored optics. That's the, uh, the study of light, basically. This study led to the invention of a device called the camera obscura. These devices have probably been around since around the fourth century BC. Anyway, camera obscuras are basically darkened structures like a small room or even a box. The walls of the structure are solid ... you know, to keep out light. And the only light that does enter comes through a small hole located on one of the walls. Due to the laws of optics, what happens is that the scene outside of the box is projected onto the inside wall of the structure.