History of photography

The word photography came from two Greek words that mean "writing with light." The first time the word "photography" was used was in 1839

"camera obscura" (Latin words meaning "dark room") "camera obscura" (Latin words meaning "dark room"). About 2,500 years ago the Chinese wrote about how an image was formed upside down on a wall from a pinhole on the opposite wall.

  1700s: CAMERA OBSCURA WAS MADE PORTABLE By putting it in a box with a pinhole on one side and a glass screen on the other.

In 1800 Thomas Wedgewood, was making "sun pictures" by placing leaves on leather that he had treated with silver salts, but he couldn't find a way to stop the darkening action of light and his leaf images faded into blackness.

For the birth of photography to happen two key discoveries were still needed: 1. a way to combine light-sensitive material with the camera obscura 2. a way to make an image permanent.

1st Photograph Joseph Nicéphore Niépce 1826 Niépce produced his photo—a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window—by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill.

Daguerre found that silver iodide was much more sensitive to light than Niepce's bitumen. One problem remained, the image darkened over time. Two years later he solved this problem by washing away remaining silver iodide with a solution of warm water and table salt.

Most pictures of the California Gold Rush of 1849 are daguerreotypes.

"I was first!" Three weeks after Daguerre's announcement William Henry Fox Talbot, read about the daguerreotype and realized that this invention was a lot like his own unpublicized process that he called photogenic drawing.   

In Talbot's process: 1. coat a sheet of drawing paper with silver chloride 2. put it in a camera obscura = produce a negative. later the process was improved and renamed the calotype.

1st Color Photograph James Clerk Maxwell 1861 Maxwell created the image of the tartan ribbon shown here by photographing it three times through red, blue, and yellow filters, then recombining the images into one color composite.

Color Photographs It wasn't until 1906 that a film sensitive to all colors called "panchromatic film" was produced. The first color plates were invented in 1907 by Auguste and Louis Lumiere. They named it Autochrome. The colors appeared in delicate pastel.

1st Photographs of Motion Eadweard Muybridge 1878 He arranged 12 trip-wire cameras along a racetrack in the path of a galloping horse. The resulting photo sequence proved that there is a point when no hooves touch the ground and set the stage for the first motion pictures. The debate: whether, during its gait, all four of a horse's hooves are simultaneously off the ground

Kodak Cameras In 1888, George Eastman introduced: first Kodak camera that cost $25.00. It had a 20 foot roll of paper already put in it. To get the film developed you had to return the camera to the Eastman Dry Plate Company in New York. For $10.00 they would develop the photographs, put more film in your camera and mail everything back to you. One year later an improved Kodak camera with a roll of film instead of a 20 foot roll of paper appeared.

Mr. Eastman wanted everybody to be able to take photographs Mr. Eastman wanted everybody to be able to take photographs. He worked hard to develop a camera that everybody could afford to buy. He did it in 1900. It was the Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera. It cost $1.00. Now everyone could take photographs, not just  professional photographers.

Photograph taken with a Brownie camera.

Historical Timeline: Photography 1. Camera Obscura 2. Joseph Nicéphore Niepce- 1st photograph 3. Thomas Wedgwood 4. Daguerrotype image- Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre 5. William Henry Fox Talbot- calotype 6. 1st color photography- James Clerk Maxwell 7. Autochrome plate- Auguste and Louis Lumier 8. 1st photograph of movement- Eadweard Muybridge 9. Brownie Camera- Kodak

General direction of Research: What to Research?? Everyone has something different to research. Some have people, some have photographs, some have technical processes. General direction of Research: Who Where When What Why How