"Photography" is
derived from the Greek words photos ("light") and graphein ("to
draw") The word was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W. Herschel in
1839. It is a method of recording images by the action of light, or related
radiation, on a sensitive material.
Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), a
great authority on optics in the Middle Ages who lived around 1000AD, invented
the first pinhole camera, (also called the camera obscura) and was able to explain why the images were upside down. It continued to change
through many generations of photographic technology, including daguerreotypes, calotypes, dryplates, film, and digital cameras.The
first casual reference to the optic laws that made pinhole cameras possible,
was observed and noted by Aristotle around 330 BC.
In 1832, a little-known French-Brazilian inventor Hercules Florence studied ways of permanently fixing camera obscura images, which he named "photographia".
The First Photograph
On a summer day in 1827, Joseph Nicephore Niepce made the first photographic picture with a camera obscura. Prior to Niepce people just used the camera obscura for viewing or drawing purposes not for making photographs.Joseph Nicephore
Niepce's heliographs or sun prints as they were called were the prototype for the modern photograph, by letting light draw the
picture.
The first successful permanent photograph created by Nicephore Niepce in 1826 Original loss less version Source (through e-mail): :Rebecca A. M. Photography is the result of combining several different technical discoveries. Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–80) discovered silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516–71) discovered silver chloride.Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568.
Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. Louis Daguerre fellow Frenchman,Louis Daguerre was also experimenting to find a way to capture an image, but it would take him another dozen years before Daguerre was able to reduce exposure time to less than 30 minutes and keep the image from disappearing afterwards.
Birth
of Modern Photography
Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the first practical process of photography. In 1829, he formed a partnership with Joseph Nicephore Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed. In 1839 after several years of experimentation and Niepce's death, Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after himself -the daguerroetup.
Robert Cornelius self-portrait, Oct. or Nov. 1839, approximate quarter plate daguerreotype. The back reads, "The first light picture ever taken."
Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of
silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating
a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and
exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.
exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.
Negative to Postive ProcessTintypes Tintypes, patented in 1856 by Hamilton Smith, were another medium that heralded the birth of photography. A thin sheet of iron was used to provide a base for light-sensitive material, yielding a positive image.
Wet Plate Negatives
In 1851, Frederick Scoff
Archer, an English sculptor, invented the wet plate negative. Using a viscous solution of collodion, he coated glass
with light-sensitive silver salts. Because it was glass and not paper, this wet
plate created a more stable and detailed negative. Photography advanced
considerably when sensitized materials could be coated on plate glass. However,
wet plates had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. In the field
this meant carrying along a portable darkroom.
Dry Plate Negatives & Hand-held Cameras
In 1879, the dry Plate was invented, a glass negative plate with a dried gelatin
emulsion. Dry plates could be stored for a period of time. Photographers no
longer needed portable darkrooms and could now hire technicians to develop
their photographs. Dry processes absorbed light quickly so rapidly that the
hand-held camera was now possible.
Flexible Roll Film
In 1889,George Eastman invented film with a base that was flexible, unbreakable, and
could be rolled. Emulsions coated on acellulose nitrate film base, such as Eastman's, made the mass-produced box camera
a reality.
Color Photographs
In the early 1940s,
commercially viable color films (except Kodachrome, introduced in 1935) were
brought to the market. These films used the modern technology of dye-coupled colors
in which a chemical process connects the three dye layers together to create an
apparent color image.
First color image- photo by Tomas Sutton 1861
Digital
Photography
The first recorded attempt at building a
digital camera was in 1975 by Steven Sasson,
an engineer at Eastman Kodak.
It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductor
in 1973. The camera weighed
8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had
a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to
capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical
exercise, not intended for production.
It is wonderful to know that photography was discovered as it was, and when it was. Accident or no accident, there is no better way to save your memories and the art of all we see around us daily. Photography is a art..a hobby..a job...but definitely a "sport" you can do for the rest of your life.
