Camera Obscura

The camera obscura is a natural phenomenon where rays of light pass through a small hole and into a dark space, forming an image where they strike a surface. This results in an inverted and reversed projection of the view outside. Because this is an act of nature, it is hard to pinpoint its exact origins in photography.

Nicephore Niepce

Nicephore Niepce was the first person who utilised the camera obscura to make an image permanent. In 1826, he first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but because at least eight hours of exposure was needed, his earliest results were very crude. 

Henry Fox Talbot

The process of a photogenic drawing, which Henry Fox Talbot discovered, uses a sheet of writing paper coated in salt and a solution of silver nitrate. He discovered that this paper would darken in the sun and wherever an object would block the light would remain white. In 1835, he then went on to create ‘Mouse Trap’ cameras where this light sensitive paper would be placed into the wooden box and left in front of the subject photographed for several hours to expose. The paper was later treated with chemicals to stabilise the image. 

Daguerreotype

Invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839, a daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. They were very detailed but heavy and fragile. Unlike Talbot’s process, Daguerre’s images were one-offs and therefore could not produce multiple reproductions of the original image.

Richard Maddox

Richard Maddox invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. The advantages of this process were that photographers could now use commercial dry plates off the shelf rather than having to prepare everything themselves. These photos also did not have to be developed immediately. 

George Eastman

In 1879, George Eastman obtained a patent on his plate-coating machine where he later sold manufactured dry plates to the public. He made sure his business had mass production at a low cost and would later have worldwide distribution. After eventually announcing the roll of film in 1883, he created the company ‘Kodak’. 

Kodak (Brownie)

The roll of film became the basis for the first Kodak camera, the ‘Brownie’, which was a basic box camera with a single lens. Users received the preloaded camera, took their photographs and then returned it to Kodak where they would develop the film, print the photos and reload the camera with new film before returning it to the customer. 

Digital photography

Russell Kirsch developed the first program computer where he managed to build a drum scanner that allowed him to make the first digital images. In 1969, Willard Boyle and George Smith developed a charge-coupled device and later discovered that if you pair this device with something photosensitive it can become a camera sensor. In 1972, the first digital colour photograph was published.