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Historical Event: Ultraviolet Radiation Discovered
Johann Ritters discovered that silver chloride turned black in light which led to the discovery of light sources outside of the visible spectrum. -
Wedgewood and Davy: Photography on Pottery
The two men were able to make images on pieces of pottery using a silver nitrate technique. However, they were unable to make the images stop darkening in light. -
Historical Event: Louisiana Purchase
The U.S. bought the piece of land on the west of the Mississippi river from France for $15 million. -
Niepce: First surviving Photograph
The photograph took 8 hours to make and was fairly poor quality but is the first photograph to survive. -
Invention: First Typographer
The first typographer was created by W.A. Burt. This invention preceded the typewriter. -
Henry Fox-Talbot: The Calotype
His invention would create a negative of the image which would then need to be transferred to create the final photograph. This is his first photograph of a latticed window. -
Historical Event: Trail of Tears
The Cherokee Nation was forced to give up their land east of the Mississippi and move to the Oklahoma area. It had devastating effects for the Cherokee people. -
Charles Wheatstone: Stereoscopic images
A device called a stereoscope used to view 3D images created by Charles Wheatstone -
Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre's: Daguerreotype
Using copper plates with silver iodine allowed Daguerre to create higher quality images and he was able to do it with a much shorter exposure time. This image is thought to be the first of a person since the man getting his shoe shined was standing in one place for such a long time. -
Anna Atkins: Photographs of British Algae
The first ever photographic book. Atkins documented her scientific illustrations using cyanotype. -
Historical Event: U.S. Mexican War
The war was part of America's Manifest Destiny quest to expand its territory across all of North America. -
Historical Event: California Gold Rush
Over 300,000 people migrated to California from the eastern United States to California, in hopes of getting rich by mining for gold. -
Frederick Scott Archer: Wet Collodion Photographic Process
This process produced glass negatives and highly detailed prints. They created high quality photographs and were easy to produce. This was the process used by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron. -
Historical Event: Crimean War
The Crimean War fought mainly on the Crimean Peninsula between the Russians and the British, French, and Ottoman Turkish. -
Roger Fenton: War Photographs
Best known photographer of the Crimean War, mainly took photographs of the scenery and soldiers not in active war. -
Lewis Carroll: photographs of children
Carroll is best known for his book Alice in Wonderland. He was also a photographer. Unfortunately his work is often tainted by rumors of pedophilia and inappropriate relations with children. -
Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Darwin used photography to prove that emotions were inherently expressed the same through common facial expressions regardless of culture. -
Unknown Photographer: The Battle of Melegnano
The first known case of photographs of death during war being taken. Since exposure times were still long, the photographs were taken after the war had ended. This was also the first occasion when the gruesome side of war was featured rather than the romanticized version previously shown. -
Matthew Brady: Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
Matthew Brady is one of the best known Civil War photographers. Interestingly, the photograph was carefully taken in a specific way in order to enlarge Lincoln's hands. -
Nadar: Arial Photography
Although the earliest surviving arial photograph was by James Wallace Beck in Boston (right), Nadar was the most famous first arial photographer. His earliest surviving photograph was in 1862 (center). Many of his photographs did not survive due to needing a dark room for wet‐collodion prints. -
Historical Event: U.S. Civil War
The war between the southern and northern United States primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. -
Alexander Gardner: Sketchbook of War
One of Matthew Brady's assistants, Alexander Gardner, published a book of war photographs from the civil war. At the time, making such a book was extremely labor intensive so only 200 copies were made. -
Photographic Movement: Pictorialism
1885-1915: This movement allowed photographers to experiment with altering photographs to enhance or change the focus of the photograph. -
Invention: Basketball
Basketball was invented by Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith as a less injury-prone sport than football. -
Historical Event: First Modern Olympic Games
The first olympic games was held in Athens, Greece in 1896 with athletes from 14 countries participating. -
The Photo‐Secession movement
1907-1917: This movement opposed pictorialism and focused on moving away from photo altering and toward straight object photography. These photographers appreciated the objects they photographed for what they were and felt they didn't need altering.
