The first person to attempt photographing a solar eclipse was Italian physicist Gian Alessandro Majocchi in 1842. He tried to photograph the total solar eclipse that took place in July of that year but only had partial success. Majocchi used the daguerreotype technique to capture the eclipse, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with silver. The first successful picture of a solar corona was taken on July 28, 1851, by Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski at the Royal Prussian Observatory in Königsberg.
In 1900, Smithsonian photographer Thomas Smillie documented a solar eclipse by rigging cameras to seven telescopes, successfully making eight glass-plate negatives. His work was considered an amazing photographic and scientific achievement. Additionally, Victorian-era female astronomer Annie Maunder came to India in 1898 to photograph a solar eclipse. She captured an enormous ray-like structure bursting from the Sun, known as a coronal streamer. Maunder’s expedition to India in 1898 was focused on capturing the total solar eclipse.