---
title: "Which came first, the aeroplane or photography?"
description: "the aeroplane vs photography: photography came first, by 77 years — 1826 against 1903. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/aeroplane-vs-photograph/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the aeroplane or photography?

**Which came first, the aeroplane or photography?: photography**

1826 — 77 years before the aeroplane

photography came first, by 77 years. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

## Side by side

|  | the aeroplane | photography |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1903 | 1826 |
| Date | 1903-12-17 | — |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk. | Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature. |

## the aeroplane

The first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 36 metres — less than the wingspan of a Boeing 747. The Wrights' real contribution was not the engine but three-axis control, which they worked out with a wind tunnel of their own design after finding the published lift tables wrong. Sixty-six years separate that flight from the Moon landing, well within a single lifetime.

## photography

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras, made around 1826 or 1827 on a pewter plate coated in bitumen, required an exposure of at least eight hours. Daguerre's process of 1839 cut that to minutes and made photography practical. Photography therefore predates the telephone by half a century and the fax machine by seventeen years.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the aeroplane or photography?

photography, by 77 years — 1826 against 1903.

### When did the aeroplane start?

1903. The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk.

### When did photography start?

1826. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

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## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)