Timeline: The generation of Cameras

1839

Daguerreotype camera

The first camera that was ever made Maison Susse Frères in 1839, with a lens by Charles Chevalier.

1857

Collodion Dry Plates

The Collodion dry plates is a camera that was built in the late 19th century, precisely it had been available since 1857 and was created by Désiré van Monckhoven.

1910

Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera

The "Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera" is a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

1925

Leitz camera

Oskar Barnack created the Leitz camera in 1925. It wasn't until after World War I that Leica commercialized their first 35mm Cameras.

1939

Argus C3

The Argus Camera was made in 1939 which was a later version of the inexpensive camera; Argus A in 1936 with improved camera lens.

1948

Contax S

The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the Hungarian Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the Contax S , the first camera to use a pentaprism.

1959

Nikon F camera

Nikon F of 1959 — the first Japanese system camera.
The Nikon F, had a full line of interchangeable components and accessories and is generally regarded as the first Japanese system camera.

1981

Sony Mavica

Handheld electronic cameras, in the sense of a device meant to be carried and used like a handheld film camera, appeared in 1981 with the demonstration of the Sony Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera).

1986

Canon RC-701

Analog electronic cameras do not appear to have reached the market until 1986 with the Canon RC-701. Canon demonstrated a prototype of this model at the 1984 Summer Olympics, printing the images in the Yomiuri Shinbun, a Japanese newspaper.

1999

Nikon D1

The benefit of using an SLR base was the ability to use any existing Minolta AF mount lens. 1999 saw the introduction of the Nikon D1, a 2.74 megapixel camera that was the first digital SLR developed entirely from the ground up by a major manufacturer.