HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHYTroy Marten

Origins

Long before Photography existed, cameras were being used in The 6th century by Chinese and Byzantines using Pinehole cameras.

Pinehole cameras are simple cameras without lens and a single small aperture.

The very first photograph was created by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. his first photograph a black and white picture of a scene of nature.

Digital

Digital photography is different from normal photography, as it uses an array of electronic photodetectors. The files are then stored as a computer file awaiting digital processing, viewing, digital publishing or printing.

The first attempt to build a digital camera was in 1975 by an engineer called Steve Sasson. The camera was intended to be a simple experiment, and not a product.

Glass plates

Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a target medium in photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate.

Early plates used the very inconvenient wet collodion process which was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates.

Technical developments

500 BC: Chinese and Byzantine Camera obscuras used to form images on walls in darkened rooms; image formation via a pinhole. First recorded incident of a camera.

1689: Isaac Newton discovered that light is the source of all colour. 17th century: Camera obscuras in frequent use by artists and made

portable in the form of sedan chairs. 1826: French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce takes the first

permanent picture. 1837: Daguerre invents the first camera. 1841: William Henry Fox Talbot invents the Calotype, a photographic

process using paper and silver iodide. 1861: first colour picture, taken by Thomas Sutton. 1884: George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film. 1900: first mass-marketed camera; brownie. 1986: Kodak scientists invent the world's first megapixel sensor.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton, born in 1643, is probably most notably famous for discovering Gravity, creating the first reflecting telescope, and how light is the source of all colour. He discovered that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum.

To this day, Isaac Newton is called “the greatest scientist to ever live” by many.

George Eastman

George Eastman was born in 1854, and was an American inventor who created the Kodak. He also invented roll film in 1884, which helped to bring Photography to the mainstream.

He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester.

Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot, born in 1800, was a British inventor and photography pioneer who invented the calotype process, a precursor to photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries.

He also invented a flexible, paper based film in 1884.

His work in the 1840s on photo-mechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Joseph Niepce, born in 1765, was the first person to ever create a permanent picture in 1825, where he took a picture of nature, or rather his back garden.

He also created Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine.

He began experimenting to set optical images in 1793. Some of his early experiments made images, but they faded very fast. Letters to his sister-in-law around 1816 indicate that he found a way to fix images on paper, but not prevent them from deterioration in light