*Joseph Nicephore Niepce - was able to obtain camera images on papers sensitized with silver chloride solution in 1816.He invented a photographic process which he called "heliography" meaning "writing of the sun"
*Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre - invented "Daguerreotype", an early photograph produced on a silver or silver-covered copper plate.It formed an image directly on the silver surface of a metal plate.It was a positive process,thus,it yielded one of a kind images.
*William Henry Fox Talbot - invented a process called calotype, a photographic process by which a large number of prints could be produced from a paper negative.Calotype use paper with surface fibers impregnated with light sensitive compounds.
Calotype vs. Daguerre - fixation in calotype was only partial while images in daguerreotype were made permanent with the use of hypo (short for hyposulfite thiosulfate,sodium thiosulfate or a solution of thiosulfate). Sodium thiosulfate or hypo is a hygroscopic (readily taken up and retaining moisture) crystalline salt used especially as a photographic fixing agent and a reducing or bleaching agent.
*John Frederick William Herchel - coined the term photography and applied the terms negative and positive to photography.He made improvements in photographic processes, particularly in inventing the cyanotype process and variations (such as the chrysotype) the precursors of the modern blueprint process.He discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this "hyposulfite of soda" (hypo) could be used as a photographic fixer, to fix pictures and make them permanent after experimentally applying it in 1839.
*Richard Leach Maddox - was an English photographer and physician who invented light weight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871.
*Frederick Scott Archer