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Mar 2, 900
9th Century
Al Hazen, an an Arab scientist created the Camera Obscura which was a dark box/room with a single and small hole on one side that let light through which would project the image from the outside onto the inside -
Period: Mar 3, 900 to
The story of how cameras came to be
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Mar 2, 1452
The Renaissance
1452-1519. Artists like Leonardo DaVinci used this method toto introduce 3-D scenes onto a flat plane so that they could copy things -
1724
In 1724, Johann Heinrich Schultz found that exposing certain silver compounds to light altered their appearance and left marks wherever the light touched.
Schultz found a way to record the images that Al Hazen was able to project, but only for a little while.
Schultz's images disappeared soon after he had made them -
1839
It wasn't until 1839 that people figured out how to project images onto light-sensitive surfaces that would keep the image after exposure, and so, photography was born -
Henry Talbot
At that point, it was mostly two inventors who fought for the best way to make photos.
One was British scientist Henry Fox Talbot, whose calotype process used paper and allowed many copies to be made from a single negative. -
Louis Daguerre,
The other inventor, Louis Daguerre, was an artist and chemist in France.
He developed something called a daguerreotype, which used a silvered plate and which produced a sharper image.
But the daguerreotype could only make positive images so copies had to be made by taking another photo.
In the end, the daguerreotype won out as the first commercially successful photographic process mostly because the government made it freely available to the public -
Taking the actual photos
This process still required a whole dark room at the location of the photograph, which was a big hassle
Photographers had to take enormous trailers with all their equipment wherever they wanted to take a picture
The early processes had extremely long exposure times.
To get a good photo, you would have to stand perfectly still for up to two minutes -
Other inventions
This led to development of inventions like the head holder, a wire frame that would hide behind you while supporting your head.
It's also why you don't see people smiling in early photographs, it was hard to keep smiling the whole time -
George Eastman
And then George Eastman came along.
He believed that everyone should have access to photography, and he spent many late nights mixing chemicals in his mother's kitchen to try to achieve a dry plate photographic process.
This would allow exposed negatives to be stored and developed later at a more convenient place instead of carting those dark rooms, necessary for wet plates, around -
Kodak
After starting a business, which made dry plates, he discovered plastic roll film that would fit in hand-held cameras
These cameras sold by the millions under the tag line: "You push the button; we do the rest"