Joseph- Nicephore Niepce, France,   ca. 1827

Many inventors worked to find a way of recording an image permanently. But Niepce was the first to take what we would now call a photograph. He set up a camera in the window of his home, left it there for most of the day, and wound up with a grainy, blurry photograph of the rooftops nearby. One photograph took several hours. Imagine how tired you could get of standing perfectly still and saying "Cheese."