French inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niepce was born today, March 7, 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, where his father was a wealthy lawyer. He had an older brother Claude, a sister, and a younger brother, Bernard.

He created the first true photographs, but with the help of his brother, Claude, he also invented the first internal combustion engine.

Niépce was educated for the Catholic Priesthood. While studying at the seminary, he decided to adopt the name Nicéphore in honor of Saint Nicephorus the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople.

At the seminary, his studies taught him experimental methods in science, and by practicing those, he rapidly achieved success and ultimately graduated to become a professor at the college.

Because his family was suspected of royalist sympathies, Niépce fled the French Revolution but returned to serve in the French army as a staff officer under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1791 and served a number of years in Italy and on the island of Sardi