A (BRIEF) HISTORY OF

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography helps people

to see.
- Berenice Abbott
 PHOTOGRAPHY comes came from two
Greek words meaning writing with light.
First used in 1839.
 The Chinese were the first to write
about the basic idea of the pinhole
camera or "camera obscura" (Latin
words meaning "dark room") in 470 BC.
 In the 1500s many artists, including Michelangelo
and Leonardo da Vinci, used the "camera obscura"
to help them draw pictures. A person or object would
be outside the dark room, their image was reflected
on a piece of paper and the artist would trace it.
In the 1700s the camera obscura was made
portable by putting it in a box with a
pinhole on one side and a glass screen on
the other. Light coming through this
pinhole projected an image onto the glass
screen.
Two types of portable cameras obscura, circa 1769
 "View from the Window at Le Gras, France"
The birth of photography happened in 1826 when a French scientist, Joseph
Nicephore Niepce, put a plate coated with bitumen (an asphalt used in ancient
times as a cement or mortar) in a camera obscura. He placed the camera
obscura facing his house for eight hours and made a photograph. It is the
earliest known photograph still in existence today.
 Niepce (left) began sharing his findings with Louis
Jacques Mande Daguerre (right), an artist who owned
a theatre in Paris. They became partners three years
later. Daguerre's most important discovery came in
1835, two years after Niepce died.
Daguerre found that the chemical compound silver iodide was much
more sensitive to light than Niepce's bitumen. He put a copper plate
coated with silver iodide in a camera obscura, exposed this plate to
light for a short time, then to fumes of mercury and an image
appeared! One problem remained, the image darkened over time.
Two years later he solved this problem by washing away remaining
silver iodide with a solution of warm water and table salt.

Daguerre
Still life
1837
Daguerre's process, which he named the daguerreotype, was
announced to the world on January 7, 1839. Half a year later the
French government gave Daguerre and Niepce's son, Isidore,
lifetime pensions in exchange for all rights to their invention. The
daguerreotype was to become France's gift to the world.

Here is one of the first

daguerreotypes that
was taken in 1839. It is
a picture of Port
Ripetta, Rome in Italy.
William Henry Fox Talbot, developed a similar process. He first
coated a sheet of drawing paper with the chemical compound silver
chloride, then he put it in a camera obscura where it produced an
image with the tones reversed (a negative). He then placed the
negative against another coated sheet of paper to produce a positive
image. This process was later improved and renamed the calotype
and is the basis for most modern film technology which relies on
negatives to produce many positive prints.
This is a picture of one of the first commercially made daguerreotype
cameras that was made in 1839. It was designed by Mr. Daguerre, the
inventor of the daguerreotype.
Photography
arrived in America
in 1838 because
the man who
invented the
telegraph Samuel
F. B. Morse, was so
excited about it.
He saw a demon-
stration of the
daguerreotype in
Paris and returned
to America and
spread the news.
Daguerreotype of Samuel Morse
Portraits of people
were the most
popular type of
photographs taken
in the 1800's.
Photographic
portraits were much
less expensive than
painted ones, they
took less time and
were more accurate.
People who painted
peoples portraits
quickly went out of
business or became
daguerreotypists
themselves.
 A less expensive process was the tintype which used an iron plate
instead of a glass plate. During the Civil War, tintypes were most often
used. Tintype photographers often worked from the back of horse-
drawn wagons photographing pioneer families and Union soldiers.

Photographer's
wagon during the
Civil War in 1863 in
Virginia. Timothy
O'Sullivan took
this photograph.
The Civil War in America was the first war to be thoroughly
recorded by photography. American photographer Mathew Brady
saw the importance of documenting the conflict at its beginning
and organized a team of photographers to cover different
battlefronts. They took 7,000 pictures!

Photograph of George Armstrong Custer (on right) and a

Confederate prisoner during the Civil War.
Driving of the golden spike

In the 1800's industries

hired photographers to
photograph the great
things they did like
building ships, railroads,
buildings and
bridges. In Utah the
completion of the
transcontinental railroad
in 1869 was celebrated
with a photograph of the
two steam locomotives
facing each other. This
photograph was taken
by Andrew J. Russell
who had worked for
Mathew Brady during
the Civil War.
 Kodak Cameras
George Eastman, was only 24 years old
when he set up his Eastman Dry Plate
Company in New York in 1880 and the
first half-tone photograph appeared in a
daily newspaper. In 1888, he introduced
the first Kodak camera that cost $25.00
(a great deal of money at the time). It had
a 20 foot roll of paper, (enough for 100
pictures) already inside. To get the film
developed you had to return the camera
to the Eastman Dry Plate Company in
Rochester, New York. For $10.00 they
would develop the photographs, put more
film in your camera and mail everything
back to you. One year later, an improved
Kodak camera with a roll of film instead
of a 20 foot roll of paper appeared.
Eastman wanted everybody to be able to take photographs. So, he
worked to develop a camera everybody could afford. In 1900, he
introduced the Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera. It cost $1. Now
everyone could take photographs, not just professional
photographers.
Color Photographs
People had tried to make color photographs since 1860. It wasn't until
1906 that a film sensitive to all colors called "panchromatic film" was
produced. The first color plates were invented in 1907 by Auguste and
Louis Lumiere. They named it Autochrome. The colors appeared in
delicate pastel.
 The cameras that we have now use film with
"sprockets" (holes along both sides of film). This film
was developed in 1914 by Oscar Barnack.

Oscar Barnack, the inventor of the world-renowned

Leicca camera was the first to utilize the new 35mm
format with the production of the Ur-Leica in 1924.
Kodachrome was the first color film that had more than
one layer of film - it had many layers of film. The earlier
color process of taking three separate photographs and
putting them on top of each other to get one color
photograph was no longer necessary. You could just take
one photograph! Kodachrome was developed in 1936.
In 1948 Edwin Land invented the Polaroid camera which
could take a picture and print it in about one minute.
The first instant color film is
developed in 1963 by Polaroid.
The picture developed shortly
after it emerged from the
camera. It did not have to be
sent out for processing.
 1969 The
concept of the
digital camera was
introduced.
1975 The first
recorded attempt
at building a digital
camera. It weighed
8 pounds &
recorded black and
white images to a
cassette tape.
 1984 - the first commercial digital
camera was created by Canon, a
Japanese camera company.
 It was tested at the
Los Angeles Olympic
Games in 1984. The
pictures were
published the next
day in a Japanese
newspaper.
The experiment
worked so well,
Canon decided to put
the camera on the
market.
 1986 - Kodak
scientists invent
the world's first
megapixel
sensor, capable
of recording 1.4
million pixels
that could pro-
duce a 5x7-inch
digital photo-
quality print.
 DIGITAL is now the most prevalent type
of camera. According to InfoTrends.com
digital camera sales soared to 53 million
units sold in 2004.
OTHER KEY DEVELOPMENTS
1988 a new device was created that
allowed photographers to scan their
negatives & create a digital copy.
 From the 1980s+ new ways to collect and
share digital photos start to be developed.

1992 The Photo CD

was introduced by
Kodak.
 Breakthroughs in Photo Sharing:

1990s memory cards

1999 Shutterfly
2000 USB Drives
2000 Snapfish
2001 iPod
2003 Photobucket
2004 -- Flickr click to view a complete chart
 October 6, 2010 Instagram launches.
Quickly gains popularity. Had more than
100 million active users by the time it was
acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for
roughly $1 billion in cash and stock.
February 19, 1990 Adobe Systems
introduces Photoshop

Fast image editing

and manipulation
2000 -- In Japan, Sharps J-SH04 becomes
the worlds first camera phone.
 June 29, 2007
Apple, Inc. releases
the first iPhone.
Includes a 2.0 MP
rear camera with
geotagging

Apple co-founder Steve

Jobs with iPhone 1
THE FUTURE