History of photography

The history of photography began with the discovery of two critical principles: The first is camera obscura image projection; the second is the discovery that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to the 18th century.

Around 1717, Johann Heinrich Schulze used a light-sensitive slurry to capture images of cut-out letters on a bottle. However, he did not pursue making these results permanent. Around 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms, but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images.

In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. On August 2, 1839 Daguerre demonstrated the details of the process to the Chamber of Peers in Paris. On August 19 the technical details were made public in a meeting of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Fine Arts in the Palace of Institute (for granting the rights of the inventions to the public, Daguerre and Niépce were awarded generous annuities for life). When the metal based daguerreotype process was demonstrated formally to the public, the competitor approach of paper-based calotype negative and salt print processes invented by Henry Fox Talbot was already demonstrated in London (but with less publicity). Subsequent innovations made photography easier and more versatile. New materials reduced the required camera exposure time from minutes to seconds, and eventually to a small fraction of a second; new photographic media were more economical, sensitive or convenient. Since the 1850s, the collodion process with its glass-based photographic plates combined the high quality known from the Daguerreotype with the multiple print options known from the calotype and was commonly used for decades. Roll films popularized casual use by amateurs. In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in natural color as well as in black-and-white.

The commercial arrival of digital cameras in the 1990s revolutionized photography. During the first decade of the 21st century, film declined as digital cameras became cheaper, easier to use, and better in image quality. Once cameras became standard on smartphones, taking photos and posting them online became an ordinary part of daily life around the world.

The coining of the word photography is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839. It is based on the Greek φῶς (phōs; genitive phōtos), meaning "light", and γραφή (graphê), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing of light".

A natural phenomenon, known as camera obscura or pinhole image, can project a (reversed) image through a small opening onto an opposite surface. This principle may have been known and used in prehistoric times. The earliest known written record of the camera obscura is to be found in the 4th century BCE, in two different places in parallel: by Aristotle in Greece and by Mozi in China. Alhazen (or Ibn al-Haytham) is said to be the first that actually built a camera obscura. Until the 16th century the camera obscura was mainly used to study optics and astronomy, especially to safely watch solar eclipses without damaging the eyes. In the later half of the 16th century some technical improvements were developed: a biconvex lens in the opening (first described by Gerolamo Cardano in 1550) and a diaphragm restricting the aperture (Daniel Barbaro in 1568) gave a brighter and sharper image. In 1558 Giambattista della Porta was the first to write a description of using the camera obscura as a drawing aid in his popular and influential books. Della Porta's proposal was widely adopted by artists and since the 17th century portable versions of the camera obscura were commonly used—first as a tent, later as boxes.

The box type camera obscura was the basis for photographic cameras, as used in the earliest attempts to capture natural images in light sensitive materials. This was the first step in the path that Walter Benjamin described in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

A physiognotrace is an instrument used to create a semi-automated portrait. It was invented in the 18th century and was abandoned when light-sensitive materials were discovered. It was popular for several decades. The sitter sat in a wooden frame and turned to the side to pose. A pantograph connected to a pencil produced a contour line on a plate within a few minutes.