I is credited with producing the first successful photograph in June-July of 1827. I was fascinated with lithography, but I could not draw MT artist son to make the images. In 1814 MY son was drafted into the army to fight at Waterloo,I was left having to look for another way of obtaining images. Eventually I succeeded, calling his product Heliographs (after the Greek "of the sun"). Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, writing in 1857, informs us that he was a man of private means, who had began his researches in 1814.

I came over to England later that year and sought to promote his invention via the Royal Society. However, the Royal Society had a rule that it would not publicize a discovery that contained an undisclosed secret, so I meet with total failure. Returning to France, he teamed up with Louis Daguerre in 1829, a partnership which lasted until his death only four years later, at the age of 69. He left behind him some examples of his heliographs, which are now in the Royal Photographic Society's collection.

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~jeff/115a/history/niepce.html