Original Story -LOS ANGELES, June 26 -The image acknowledged as the world’s first photograph, was taken by a French inventor in 1826, has passed its first full-scale analysis with flying colors and is now awaiting an airtight case that will keep it safe for centuries to come, scientists said Wednesday. [Photo on next page]

 
 The faint 20-cm by 16.5cm image of the French countryside, captured by Joseph Nicephore Niepce on a thin pewter plate, has been undergoing a high-tech check-up by scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute in a joint project with French photo conservationists. 
 Using X-rays, multi-spectral imaging and infra-red spectrometers, the scientists sought to unlock the mysterious chemical processes by which the image was made. 
 The image, which Niepce called a heliograph in acknowledgment of the sun?s power, was last exhibited in 1898 and had been missing for years before it turned up in 1952. 
 Stulik said the recent tests had established that the image was formed by a number of small droplets of bitumen sitting on the plate, rather than a continuous layer. But the scientists have still to try to recreate that process. 
 On completion of their experiments, the image will return to its home at Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin and go back on display in 2003. 
 In a related story archaeologists have found what they believe is the oldest know carbon drawing on a recently uncovered cave wall in the Alsace region of France. Scientists are scurrying to protect the area from further cave-ins and are still awaiting a 2nd carbon dating verification. 
 World’s oldest drawing