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In 1826 the French inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, invented the first permanent photograph using a camera obscura to capture an image and project it onto a pewter sheet covered with a light-sensitive material. -
Louis Daguerre, developed a technique in which a silver-coated copper plate fumed with iodine vapour formed silver iodide when exposed to light in the camera. He reduced exposure times from the couple hours they had been to a few minutes. His discovery was presented to the French Academy of Sciences in January of 1939 and was given a life-time stipend to not patent his important discovery.
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In 1935, William Fox Talbot succeeded in producing negative photographic images similar to Niépce's early experiments. Unlike though Niépce's photographs which took hours of exposure time, Talbot perfected a method that brought exposure time down to only 1-2 minutes. His prototype that he published in 1841 became the basis for analog photographic reproduction throughout the 19th and 20th century. -
Fredrick Scott Archer, in 1851 created the collodion process. Two glass plates where coated with a collodion solution and exposed as wet plates to create negatives. It required a portable dark room, but because of the reduced exposure time it was one of the most prevalent photographic methods up until the 1880s.
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Dr.Richard Maddox made a breakthrough in photography, creating a process that replaced the wet plates being used previously. Using a light sensitive gelatin emulsion and allowing the glass to dry prior to use. This allowed for the plates to be transported, exposed and then processed at a later time. This breakthrough is what also paved the way for smaller hand-held cameras.
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George Eastman developed a flexible film, which led to the first film cameras. It allowed photography to become significantly more affordable and widespread. Before photography was only available for professionals and the elite class.
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The Lumière brothers Auguste and Louis had been experimenting with color photography in the late 19th to early 20th century. In 1907 the perfected their process and had a public demonstration which had the process take off. Autochromes to be viewed properly though had to be held up to a light and with a rather complex process to creating them the process quickly fell out of favor.
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In 1935 Kodak created a color film but it wasn't until the 1950s where the Kodachrome was produced again for anyone to buy. Before that anyone wishing for the color film had to send it to a Kodak laboratory. It was only when the Department of Justice declared Kodachrome processing a monopoly that is was allowed to be processed in other plants.
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In 1961, the Kodak company created a faster, more versatile version of the previous Kodachrome. This made the Kodachrome II more appealing to the general population and for the next decade the film was used widespread.
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Steve Sasson an employee of the Kodak company was tasked in investigating if the charged-coupled device (CCD) could be used to produce an image for a camera. In 1975 he succeeded and created the world's first digital camera.
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The first photo ever posted on the World Wide Web was a photoshopped picture of a little-known female comedy band called the Les Horribles Cernettes. -
In 2000, Samsung released the first cell phone with a camera. Released in South Korea the SCH-V200 flipped open and was capable of taking up to 20 photos.