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 1718, 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 or 1827, 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. 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.
Etymology 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".
Early history of the camera
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.
Physiognotrace
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.
Camera lucida
A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists. The camera lucida projects an optical image of the subject being viewed, on the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure. This allows the artist to duplicate key points of the scene on the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective.
Light-sensitive materials
Fixing Note: In the process discussed here, the "Fixing" step is mentioned. This is a step in the negative development process as well as in the chemical printing process. (Of course not required in digital printing). At this stage, all remaining light-sensitive materials are removed so that the product (film or print) can be exposed to light without the image being further affected by the light.
Before 1700: Light-sensitive materials The notion that light can affect various substances—for instance, the sun tanning of skin or fading of textile—must have been around since very early times. Ideas of fixing the images seen in mirrors or other ways of creating images automatically may also have been in people's minds long before anything like photography was developed.Gernsheim, Helmut (1986). A concise history of photography . Courier Dover Publications. However, there seem to be no historical records of any ideas even remotely resembling photography before 1700, despite early knowledge of light-sensitive materials and the camera obscura.
In 1614 Angelo Sala noted that sunlight will turn powdered silver nitrate black, and that paper wrapped around silver nitrate for a year will turn black.
Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals in 1694.
1700 to 1802: earliest concepts and fleeting photogram results Schulze's Scotophors: earliest fleeting letter photograms (circa 1717) Around 1717,The title page dated 1719 of a section (of a 1721 book) containing the original publication can be seen here . In the text Schulze claims he did the experiment two years earlier German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words to the bottle. The stencils produced copies of the text in dark red, almost violet characters on the surface of the otherwise whitish contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. Schulze named the substance "Scotophors" when he published his findings in 1719. He thought the discovery could be applied to detect whether metals or minerals contained any silver and hoped that further experimentation by others would lead to some other useful results.Litchfield, Richard Buckley (1903). Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer, etc., London, Duckworth and Co. Out of copyright and available free at archive.org. In Appendix A (pp. 217-227), Litchfield evaluates assertions that Schulze's experiments should be called photography and includes a complete English translation (from the original Latin) of Schulze's 1719 account of them as reprinted in 1727. Schulze's process resembled later photogram techniques and is sometimes regarded as the very first form of photography.
De la Roche's fictional image capturing process (1760) The early science fiction novel Giphantie (1760) by the Frenchman Tiphaigne de la Roche described something quite similar to (color) photography, a process that fixes fleeting images formed by rays of light: "They coat a piece of canvas with this material, and place it in front of the object to capture. The first effect of this cloth is similar to that of a mirror, but by means of its viscous nature the prepared canvas, as is not the case with the mirror, retains a facsimile of the image. The mirror represents images faithfully, but retains none; our canvas reflects them no less faithfully, but retains them all. This impression of the image is instantaneous. The canvas is then removed and deposited in a dark place. An hour later the impression is dry, and you have a picture the more precious in that no art can imitate its truthfulness." De la Roche thus imagined a process that made use of a special substance in combination with the qualities of a mirror, rather than the camera obscura. The dark place in which the pictures dried suggests that he thought about the light sensitivity of the material, but he attributed the effect to its viscous nature.
Scheele's forgotten chemical fixer (1777) In 1777, the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was studying the more intrinsically light-sensitive silver chloride and determined that light darkened it by disintegrating it into microscopic dark particles of metallic silver. Of greater potential usefulness, Scheele found that ammonia dissolved the silver chloride, but not the dark particles. This discovery could have been used to stabilize or "fix" a camera image captured with silver chloride, but was not picked up by the earliest photography experimenters.
Scheele also noted that red light did not have much effect on silver chloride, a phenomenon that would later be applied in photographic darkrooms as a method of seeing black-and-white prints without harming their development.
Although Thomas Wedgwood felt inspired by Scheele's writings in general, he must have missed or forgotten these experiments; he found no method to fix the photogram and shadow images he managed to capture around 1800 (see below).
Elizabeth Fulhame and the effect of light on "Silver Salts" (1794) Elizabeth Fulhame's book An essay on combustion described her experiments of the effects of light on silver salts. She is better known for her discovery of what is now called catalysis, but Larry J. Schaaf in his history of photography considered her work on silver chemistry to represent a major step in the development of photography.
Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy: Fleeting detailed photograms (1790–1802) English photographer and inventor Thomas Wedgwood is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was recommended to him as a light-sensitive substance. Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather, as well as on paper moistened with a silver nitrate solution. Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed.