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Camera Obscura
The portable camera obscura is developed. The portable Camera Obscura is consisted of two boxes, where one is sliding inside the other. On one of the boxes a lens is fitted which casts an image one the translucent surface at the back of the other box. The Camera Obscura was the first camera. -
First Photo-Sensitive Compound
Professor J. Schulze had accidently created the first photo-sensitive compund by mixing chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask. After mixing it he noticed darkening on the side of the flask that was exposed to the sunlight. -
World's First Surviving Photograph
In 1826 Nicéphore Niépce had made the world's first surviving photograph from the window of a country home in France. He had done this by using polished pewter plates in a Camera Obscura. The photograph had required an exposure in the bright sunlight for 8 hours. -
First Major Problem
The first major problem was finding a practical way to capture an image on a chemical captured surface, permanent. This problem had been solved with the Daguerrotype image. It made a huge impact on the world when it was announced. Read more about the Daguerrotype image in the event titled Daguerrotype -
Daguerreotype
Daguerre came up with a practical way to permanently reproduce an image. His method had consisted of treating silver-plated copper sheets with iodine to make them sensitive to light. Then exposing them in a camera and developing the images with warm mercury vapor. The fumes from the mercury vapor would combine with the silver-plated copper sheets to produce an image. Then to prevent further exposure the plate needed to be washed with a saline solution. Daguerreotypes offered a sense of realism. -
Wet Plate Collodian Photography
In 1851 Fredrick Scott Archer who was a sculptor in England improved photographic resolution. He did this by spreading a mixture of collodion, nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol, and chemicals on sheets of glass. Immediate developing and fixing were required. This was because after the collodion film had dried, it became waterproof. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes, the negative/positive process allowed an unlimited reproductions. -
First Color Photograph
The foundation for color photography had been established in 1859 by James Clerk Maxwell. He was a Scottish physicist who had demonstrated that all colors could be reduced to the combination of three primary colors. Maxwell had created an image of the tartan ribbons that you can see in the picture. He had done this by photographing it 3 times through a red , blue, and yellow, filter. He the combined the three images into one color composite. -
Dry Plates
R.L. Maddox had produced a successful dry plate that would retain its light-sensitivity after drying. A dry plate is a glass plate coated with gelatin-based emulsion. After exposure to the light, dry plates can be brought back to a darkroom for development at leisure. Because of that they were a great advantage over the wet collodion process. The dry plates represented a turning point in photography. -
First Kodak Box Camera
George Estmen invented a camera that used dry, transparent, and flexible, photographic film. This Kodak camera was a compact box camera with 100 exposures worth of film. This price of this camera was a total of $25. It was advertised with the slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest." All non-digital hand-held cameras used today evolved from this very camera. -
Cinématographe
The Lumière brothers demonstrated a cinema projector that was capable of showing 16 frames a second. This was called the Cinématographe. Their Cinématographe had combined a camera for recording the movement and a printer. Also, when you connected it to a magic lantern, it was a projector. -
Kodak Brownie Camera
The Kodak Brownie camera is introduced. The Kodak Brownie camera was low cost and extremely easy and simple camera to use. The Kodak Brownie Camera brought photography to amateurs and the middle-class. The name "brownie" was chosen mostly because of the popularity of a children's book that had the same name and partly because the camera had initially been manufactured by Frank Brownwell.
