A l'occasion de l'ouverture de la salle Louis Ducos du Hauron au musée des beaux-arts d'Agen, un siècle après la disparition de ce génial inventeur agenais, un colloque réunira les meilleurs spécialistes de l'histoire de la photographie...
Foreword: This biography does not broach the scientific aspect of his work to make it easier to discover the man rather than the scientist. To better grasp his research, his discoveries and his work, please check the section "His Inventions".
The life, the destiny, the mutations of his brother, brought Louis Ducos du Hauron to reside sometimes far from his native land. Yet it was on his Gascon land that most of his inventions were initially born, as if his genius could only be expressed close to his own roots.
With the appearance of the daguerreotype, the madness of photography took hold of man. Scientists, artists and amateurs alike began to dream of preserving and reproducing to satiety what the eye perceived with all its capacities and what the brain assimilated in its entirety: colors, movements, and even more.
On November 23, 1868 Louis Ducos du Hauron took out a patent N° 83 061 under the title "Les Couleurs en photographie, solution du problème" which then appeared in the newspaper "Le Gers" of March 11, 15, 16, 20, 25, 1 and 6 April 1869, then was published in Paris by Marion in 1869 in a considerably expanded form (59 pages). This was the birth of color photography.
Louis Ducos du Hauron, inventor of cinema? Difficult to say because no artefact can confirm it. However, if he cannot be honored to be its inventor, he is undoubtedly its designer. And he would certainly have made the very first camera if celluloid film had been available at the time.
Les travaux et recherches de Ducos du Hauron ne se limitent pas à la photo couleurs ou animée.
The work and research of Ducos du Hauron is not limited to color or animated photography.
At the same time, he carries out investigations that are sometimes absurd, especially in his youth, but above all scientific, chemical and optical in particular, and in particular a process that is still applied today in astronomical observatories.
It’s because he was forced that Louis Ducos du Hauron joined his brother in Algiers. All his thoughts brought him back to his « business » in Toulouse. From Algiers, he followed this first industrial opportunity while continuing his research and his experiments in photography and thus taking the first colour pictures of the African continent.