---
title: "Which came first, the car or photography?"
description: "the car vs photography: photography came first, by 60 years — 1826 against 1886. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/car-vs-photograph/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the car or photography?

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

1826 — 60 years before the car

photography came first, by 60 years. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

## Side by side

|  | the car | photography |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1886 | 1826 |
| Date | 1886-01-29 | — |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen. | Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature. |

## the car

Benz's patent of 29 January 1886 is the usual date for the first practical petrol car. The vehicle's commercial breakthrough came from his wife: in 1888 Bertha Benz drove 106 km to Pforzheim without telling him, fixing the fuel line with a hatpin and the ignition with a garter on the way, and the resulting publicity sold the machine. Ford did not exist until 1903 and the Model T not until 1908.

## 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 car or photography?

photography, by 60 years — 1826 against 1886.

### When did the car start?

1886. Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen.

### 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/)