7 John Loudon McAdam 7

were adopted by the public authorities, and in 1827 he
was appointed Surveyor General of Metropolitan Roads
in Great Britain. Macadamization of roads did much to
facilitate travel and communication. The principles were
quickly adopted in other countries, notably the United
States, and are still used today.

Nicéphore Niépce

(b. March 7, 1765, Chalon-sur-Saône, France—d. July 5, 1833, Chalon-
sur-Saône)

N

icéphore Niépce was a French inventor who was the
first to make a permanent photographic image.
The son of a wealthy family suspected of royalist
sympathies, Niépce fled the French Revolution but
returned to serve in the French army under Napoleon
Bonaparte. Dismissed because of ill health, he settled near
his native town of Chalon-sur-Saône, where he remained
engaged in research for the rest of his life.
In 1807 Niépce and his brother Claude invented an
internal-combustion engine, which they called the
Pyréolophore, explaining that the word was derived from
a combination of the Greek words for “fire,” “wind,” and
“I produce.” Working on a piston-and-cylinder system
similar to 20th-century gasoline-powered engines, the
Pyréolophore initially used lycopodium powder for fuel,
and Niépce claimed to have used it to power a boat.
When lithography became a fashionable hobby in
France in 1813, Niépce began to experiment with the
then-novel printing technique. Unskilled in drawing, and
unable to obtain proper lithographic stone locally, he
sought a way to provide images automatically. He coated
pewter with various light-sensitive substances in an effort
to copy superimposed engravings in sunlight. From this he
progressed in April 1816 to attempts at photography, which