Camera Obscura

Photography began in the late 1830s in France. This started off with the camera obscura in the year 1021. A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.

Nicephore Niepce

Nicephore Niepce, a French inventor who was the first to make a permanent photographic image. To make the heliograph, Niépce dissolved light-sensitive bitumen in oil of lavender and added a thin coating over a polished pewter plate. He put the plate into a camera obscura and positioned it near a window.

Louis Daguerre

In 1839, Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotypes, are a highly detailed photographic image on a polished copper plate coated with silver. It was introduced in 1839 and became the first popular photographic medium.

Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate.

Henry Fox Talbot

Henry Fox Talbot was best known for his development of the calotype, an early photographic process that was an improvement over the daguerreotype of the French inventor Louis Daguerre.

Richard Maddox

Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. He invented the dry plate, also known as gelatin process, is an improved type of photographic plate. It was invented by Dr. Richard L. Maddox in 1871, and had become so widely adopted by 1879 that the first dry plate factory had been established.

George Eastman

George Eastman (1854-1932) changed the world through his spirit, bold leadership, and extraordinary vision. He will be remembered throughout history for founding the Eastman Kodak Company and revolutionizing the photography, film, and motion picture industries. He was an American entrepreneur and inventor whose introduction of the first Kodak camera helped to promote amateur photography on a large scale.

In 1888, The Eastman Kodak Company was founded and now is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey.