History of photography

Photography means from the Greek photos “light” and graphein “to draw”. That’s why we can say that photography is a method of recording images by the action of light.

The word was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W Herschel in 1839.

However, the history of photography we can start much earlier. It is in 1021AD when Pinhole Camera Alhazen  invented the first pinhole camera.  He was able to explain why the images were upside down.

The next big step for photography was photochemistry. The representative figure for this invention is Johann Heirich Shultz. He was a German professor who discover that certain silver salts which darken in the use of light. He use this effect to capture temporary photographic images. However he was not able to preserve an image. The silver salts continued to darken when they were not protected from light.

The experiment was followed by Joseph Niepce but he was also not able to  make the result light-fast.

During the year 1825, Joseph Nicephore Niepce developed heliography. This is a technique used to produce the world’s oldest surviving photograph.

Earliest known surviving heliographic engraving from1825

Up to 1839 photography was not so popular and only wealthy people knew what was that. However, at the begging of 19^th century everything changed. Photography was made public.

The next important element of photography history is a creation of the daguerreotype process. It was first practicable method of obtaining permanent images with a camera.

In year 1832 Hercules Florence, French painter known as a inventor of photography in Brazil.

The next important figure is the Victorian pioneer of photography William Fox Talbot. He removed the light – sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. He realized that with the negative image he is able to repeat the process of printing from negative. Consequently, the process could make any number of positive prints unlike the Daguerreotypes. He called this process ‘calotype’. Thanks to this photography started to be available to masses of people .

During the early 1860s John Carbutt begun using magnesium light for flash photography. His experiments with dry-plate photography ended with replacement of traditional collodion albumen dry plate mixture with gelatin.

In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer invented the photographic collodion. It is a process which preceded the modern gelatin emulsion.

The next important step for photography is an invention by Richard Leach Maddox who in 1871 invented  lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography.

During1884 George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company. The company is best known for photographic film products.

The creation polaroid brought the instant colour film. It was in the year 1963.

The date of first digital camera is 1991 when was created Kodak DCS100.