1826: French physicist Joseph Niepce makes the first known photograph, "View from a Window at Gras," via a "heliograph" process on a metal plate.

1830: The July Revolution in France deposes absolutist Charles X in favor of "citizen king" Louis Philippe.

1839: French Painter Jacques Daguerre, who had collaborated with Niepce between 1827 and the physicist's death in 1833, publicly patents a method for making a direct positive image on a silver plate--the daguerreotype; a year later Paris is swept up in popular enthusiasm for photography, "La Daguerreotypomanie."

1849: Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster improves the stereoscopic and invents the double camera for taking stereoscopic views; American Oliver Wendel Holmes later invents the popular stereoscopic that provides American home entertainment over the next half-century.

1853: French writer Gaspard-Fe'lix Tournachon, using his pseudonym "Nadar," opens a photographic studio in Paris which becomes a meeting place for the literary and artistic celebrities who pose for his portraits.

1861: During the Civil War between the Northern and Southern U.S. states, American photographer Matthew Brady is authorized to accompany the armies; he preserves a vast visual record of the war.

1867: Mexico's emperor Maxmillian is court martialled and executed by firing squad, thereby ending Napoleon III's dreams of an empire in Latin America.

1879: American Thomas Edison creates the first practical incandescent light.

1883: The Brooklyn Bridge, desgined by the late John Augustus Roebling, is completed over New York's East River; the world's longest suspension bridge, it connects the two largest U.S. cities, New York and Brooklyn.

1889: The Eiffel Tower, designed by French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, is completed for the Paris Exposition.

1898: Campbell's soups first appear with red and white labels, colors suggested by Cornell University's football uniforms.

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