The Development of the Camera

The Development of the Camera

The very earliest roots of photography date back to the 16th century when artists and scientists found that when light passed through a small hole in a wall of a dark room an inverted image appeared on the opposite wall. The replacement of the hole with a lens made the projected image brighter and sharper and by the 18th century the room became a portable box, used by artists as a sketching aid. In 1727 it was discovered by Johann Heinrich Schulze that silver halides and certain other chemicals turn dark when light hits them. About 1800 the first unsuccessful attempt to record an image using chemicals was made by Thomas Wedgwood.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre(left) made an invention which he called the Daguerreotype that produced a picture on metal that was bought by the French government and made public on August 19, 1839. The problem with this design was that only one copy could be produced. A year later William Henry Talbot designed the Calotype, which produced a negative image where the light colours were dark and the dark colours were light. The negative was then used to produce a positive by shining light through the negative onto chemically sensitive paper. Since this design of camera could use a single negative to create an infinite number of positives it soon predominated. In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer developed a process which reduced the time of an exposure from 30 minutes to 2-3 seconds.

In 1884 George Eastman(right), the founder of the Kodak company, introduced flexible film and four years later he introduced the box camera. Eastman's inventions were the start of the camera as it is today. Since the late 1800's the evolution of the camera has been mostly improvements and changes to Eastman's design.

Here is a look at how the general apearance of the camera has changed since the late 1800's ( click on each camera to enlarge it )