History of Photography

Posted at 12:00 AM, Dec. 29, 2006

Ever since Joseph Nicephore Niepce took the first photo in the summer of 1827, people have treasured this wonderful medium and the memories it captures in just a click! 

The History of Photography – in Less than 200 Words!

• The ancient Greeks and Chinese talked about the principles of optics and images back around the 5th century B.C. 

• Invented around the 11th century, the camera obscura used a lens to project an image onto a viewing area.  

• Joseph Nicephore Niepce (remember him?) snapped the first photograph, but it took a long time – 8 hours – to see the image, which later faded.  

• In the 1830s, Louis Jacques Daguerre experimented with many different techniques.  His goal was to reduce the time it took to develop the images.  His research resulted in lasting pictures that would develop in less than 30 minutes.  He named these images – daguerreotypes – after himself. 

• George Eastman’s celluloid film – rolled out in 1889 – made photography more accessible to everyone.  He also developed an inexpensive box camera with a fixed-focus lens and a single shutter that appealed to the public.

• Edward Land invented the popular Land Camera (also known as the Polaroid®) in the late 1940s, enabling users to have nearly instantaneous pictures.  

• Texas Instruments was the first to patent a film-less electronic camera in 1972.  One of the first to come to market was the SONY® ProMavica (Magnetic Video Camera) in 1989.  It recorded images on a 2” still-video floppy disc and was used by the CNN news crew to transmit images of the student uprising in China’s Tiananmen Square that same year.                                                                                

• From Day-Timers eTalk Newsletter