---
title: "Which came first, photography or the telephone?"
description: "photography vs the telephone: photography came first, by 50 years — 1826 against 1876. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/photograph-vs-telephone/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, photography or the telephone?

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

1826 — 50 years before the telephone

photography came first, by 50 years. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

## Side by side

|  | photography | the telephone |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1826 | 1876 |
| Date | — | 1876-03-07 |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature. | Bell was granted US patent 174,465. |

## 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.

## the telephone

Bell's patent was granted on 7 March 1876 and he made the famous call to Watson three days later. Elisha Gray filed a caveat for a similar device on the same day in February that Bell filed his application, and the priority dispute has never entirely gone away. Antonio Meucci had demonstrated a working voice telegraph in New York in 1860 but could not afford to renew his caveat.

## Common questions

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

photography, by 50 years — 1826 against 1876.

### When did photography start?

1826. Niépce made the oldest surviving photograph from nature.

### When did the telephone start?

1876. Bell was granted US patent 174,465.

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## Sources

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