Some years ago I put together a talk on the early history of photography. I had retired from a 30 year career as a photographic scientist during which I took relatively little interest in its history. I was asked to write a chapter on “Photochemical Imaging” for a text book on Applied Photochemistry which was published in 2013 ( R. Evans P. Douglas and H Burroughs Eds. Springer ISBN 978-90-481-3829-6 ). This required me to include a historical introduction and I became fascinated by the subject. Some of my interest was sparked by the technical errors I encountered in the various sources which were mostly written by historians who lacked a scientific background. They therefore introduced and perpetuated several misunderstandings which often made no technical sense. I decided recently to produce my own brief summary of the early history of photography despite the extensive body of published work devoted to this important subject.