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THE “INVENTION” OF PHOTOGRAPHY (in a nutshell)
hotography
was not so much an invention as it was an evolution
involving the technical, scientific and artistic contributions
of many determined individuals.
It goes back to ca. 350 B.C., when Aristotle described
how light passing through a hole in a dark room cast a reversed
and inverted image of the objects in its path. This phenomena
came to be known as camera obscura, meaning “dark chamber.”
Arabian scholar Ibn al Haitam wrote about the principle
ca. A.D. 1000 and told of how he used a tent as a camera obscura
for viewing the eclipse of the sun to avoid hurting his eyes. It
was used as such by astronomers for many years.
Fast forward to 1558. Giovanni Battista Della Porta, in his
book Natural Magic, suggested the camera obscura be used as a
drawing aid. It evolved into a small box with a hole fitted with a
lens on one side and a translucent screen on the opposite side,
where the artist placed tracing paper and copied the reflected
image. Angled mirrors were eventually added that reflected the
image to a screen at the top so it could be viewed right side up.
This remains the basic principle of operation for today's 35mm
single lens reflex cameras.
Tracing was not enough, however; people wanted a better way
to capture reality. It was known that when light struck certain salt
solutions it caused them to darken and could create an impression of
an image. The problem was that the image soon disappeared.
French inventor/lithographer Nicephore Niepce had been
searching for a way to etch pictures with light when, in 1826, he
coated a pewter plate with a light-sensitive substance and loaded
it into his camera obscura. After an 8-hour exposure, he recorded
a courtyard scene from his window, considered to be the earliest known photograph. When Niepce tried to repeat the process,
he could not duplicate the formula he used.
In Paris, showman and painter Louis Daguerre was also
searching for a way to capture images with light. He met Niepce
in 1829, and they worked as partners until Niepce's death in
1833. In 1837, Daguerre succeeded in making a 30-minute exposure
on silver-plated copper coated with silver iodide. He named
it the “daguerreotype,” without credit to Niepce, who did most of
the work. On January 6, 1839, the French government announced
Daguerre's process to the world. The daguerreotype had its short-comings,
though: it could only produce one-of-a-kind “positive”
images, which had to be preserved under glass to avoid fading.
Only weeks later, Englishman Henry Fox Talbot came forward
and told of a process he had been working on since 1834:
He made paper negatives in the camera that he used to make multiple
copies of positive prints. He also worked out an imperfect
technique for “fixing” his images, which he called calotypes.
When English chemist Sir John Hershel heard of the
advances of Daguerre and Talbot, he revealed his 1819 discovery
of “hypo,” a substance that removed unexposed silver salts in
photos. Daguerre and Talbot switched over to Hershel's hypo and
eliminated the problems of images fading. Hershel also coined
the terms photography -- from the Greek words for “light writing”
-- and negative and positive. The photographic process was
now complete, but it was feasible for only a small group of users.
In 1888, the popularity of photography advanced in leaps
and bounds thanks to George Eastman's Kodak camera. This
small black box was affordable and came loaded with a roll of
100-exposure film. The user took the pictures and sent the loaded
camera back to Eastman, where the film was processed and
returned along with the camera loaded with a fresh roll.
Jump ahead to the 20th century when, in 1957, Russell
Kirsch made the first computerized photo. First, he invented the
photographic scanner and the software to go with it. That first
scanned image of his infant son was the initial step in digital photography.
In 1982, Sony introduced the first digital camera for
consumer use and sent the latest phase of picture-making on its
way. Still, the story of photography continues to develop . . .
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