The Invention Of The Camera History

In the eleventh century, people noticed that if there was a small hole in one wall of a darkened room, then the light coming through the hole would make a faint picture on the opposite wall of the scene outside room. A room like this was called camera obscura. Artist later used a box "camera obscura"with a lens in the hole to make the picture clearer. But it not possible to preserve the image yhat was produced in the box.

In 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze mixed chalk, silver, and nitric acid in a bottle. He found that when the mixture was exposed to the light, it became darker. In 1826, Joseph Nicephore Niepce put some paper dipped in a light-sensitive chemical into his camera obscura which he left on a window. The result was probably the first permanent photographic image.

The image Niepce made was a "negative", a picture where all the white parts are black and all the black parts are white. Later, Lois Daguerre found a way to reverse the black and white parts to make "positive" prints. But when he looked at the pictures in the light, the chemical continued to react and the pictures went dark. In 1837, he found a way to "fix" the image. These images are known as daguerreotypes.

Many development were made in the nineteenth century. Glass plates coated with light-sensitive chemical were used to produced clear, sharp, positive prints on paper. In the 1870s, George Eastman proposed using rolls of paper film, coated with chemicals, to replace glass plates. Then, in 1888, Eastman began manufacturing the Kodak camera, the first "modern" lightweight camera which people could carry and use.

During this century, many great technological improvements have been made. One of the most important is color film. This made from layers of chemicals that are sensitive to red, green, and blue light, from which all other colors can be made. Although now, for example, we make and see photos of the earth from space, the bacic principles of photography have not changed since Niepce took his first photograph.