First, the name. We owe the name "Photography" to Sir John Herschel , who first used the term in 1839, the year the photographic process became public. (*1) The word is derived from the Greek words for light and writing.
Before mentioning the stages that led to the development of photography, there is one amazing, quite uncanny prediction made by a man called de la Roche (1729- 1774) in a work called Giphantie. In this imaginary tale, it was possible to capture images from nature, on a canvas which had been coated with a sticky substance. This surface, so the tale goes, would not only provide a mirror image on the sticky canvas, but would remain on it. After it had been dried in the dark the image would remain permanent. The author would not have known how prophetic this tale would be, only a few decades after his death.
here are two distinct scientific processes that combine to make photography possible. It is somewhat surprising that photography was not invented earlier than the 1830s, because these processes had been known for quite some time. It was not until the two distinct scientific processes had been put together that photography came into being.
he first of these processes was optical. The Camera obscura (dark room) had been in existence for at least four hundred years. There is a drawing, dated 1519, of a Camera Obscura by Leonardo da Vinci; about this same period its use as an aid to drawing was being advocated.
he second process was chemical. For hundreds of years before photography was invented, people had been aware,for example, that some colours are bleached in the sun, but they had made little distinction between heat, air and light.
Photography Timeline
- 5th-4th Centuries B.C.
Chinese and Greek philosophers describe the basic principles of optics and the camera. - 1664-1666
Isaac Newton discovers that white light is composed of different colors. - 1727
Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light. - 1794
First Panorama opens, the forerunner of the movie house invented by Robert Barker. - 1814
Joseph Niepce achieves first photographic image with camera obscura - however, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded. - 1837
Louis Daguerre's first daguerreotype - the first image that was fixed and did not fade and needed under thirty minutes of light exposure. - 1840
First American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera. - 1841
William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype process - the first negative-positive process making possible the first multiple copies. - 1843
First advertisement with a photograph made in Philadelphia. - 1851
Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process - images required only two or three seconds of light exposure. - 1859
Panoramic camera patented - the Sutton. - 1861
Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer. - 1865
Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright. - 1871
Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately. - 1880
Eastman Dry Plate Company founded. - 1884
George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film. - 1888
Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera. - 1898
Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. - 1900
First mass-marketed camera�the Brownie. - 1913/1914
First 35mm still camera developed. - 1927
General Electric invents the modern flash bulb. - 1932
First light meter with photoelectric cell introduced. - 1935
Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome film. - 1941
Eastman Kodak introduces Kodacolor negative film. - 1942
Chester Carlson receives patent for electric photography (xerography). - 1948
Edwin Land markets the Polaroid camera. - 1953
Harry Chap started what now is Chaps Photography
- 1954
Eastman Kodak introduces high speed Tri-X film. - 1960
EG&G develops extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy. - 1963
Polaroid introduces instant color film. - 1968
Photograph of the Earth from the moon. - 1973
Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera. - 1977
George Eastman and Edwin Land inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. - 1978
Konica introduces first point-and-shoot, autofocus camera. - 1980
Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder. - 1984
Canon demonstrates first digital electronic still camera. - 1985
Pixar introduces digital imaging processor. - 1990
Eastman Kodak announces Photo CD as a digital image storage medium.
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The use of digital cameras
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Digital imaging also had another government use at the time that being spy satellites. Government use of digital technology helped advance the science of digital imaging, however, the private sector also made significant contributions. Texas Instruments patented a film-less electronic camera in 1972, the first to do so. In August, 1981, Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. However, the early Mavica cannot be considered a true digital camera even though it started the digital camera revolution. It was a video camera that took video freeze-frames.
Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that "converted light to digital pictures" for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images. In 1990, Kodak developed the Photo CD system and proposed "the first worldwide standard for defining color in the digital environment of computers and computer peripherals." In 1991, Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS), aimed at photojournalists. It was a Nikon F-3 camera equipped by Kodak with a 1.3 megapixel sensor.The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the
Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony's Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).