Galleries - History Of Photography

Galleries
History of Photography
Page 1
c. 1495 - 1849

A bit of trivia on the term photography is due. The word photography is derived from the Greek words for "light" and "writing". The term was coined in 1839, the year the process was made public. Many credit the term to Sir John Herschel who first used it in a lecture he gave to the Royal Society of London on 14 March 1839. Unbeknownst to many is that an astronomer in Berlin beat him to the punch when he used the term in a letter written on 15 February of that same year. Herschel was the one with the fame and position and is now of course credited with the name. Now that you know the history of the word, what about how photography came to be. It is surprising that photography was not invented earlier than the 1830's (Tiphaigne de la Roche makes his prediction of photography in 1760.) Two processes had to merge for photography to begin, the first being optical and the second being chemical. Alone, both processes had been known since the seventeenth century. It was not until just after 1800 that chemicals were used along with the camera obscura to try to record a scene permanently. Below we have drawn up a timeline of some of the events that have taken place in the history of photography.
A description in Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts during the late 15th century exists of a Camera Obscura (dark room), which is basically a room with a small hole in one side. The light enters the room and is projected on the opposite wall in reverse. At the time of da Vinci the Camera Obscura's use as a drawing aid was being advocated. In the mid 16th century adding a lens is found to bring the picture brighter and sharper.	c. 1495	.	Typical drawing at the time of da Vinci of a Camera Obscura with telescoping aperture. The drawing above is somewhat inacurate though as the amount of sunlight flowing through the multiple windows of the room would not have allowed any viewing of a projected scene. (1)
.	.	.	c. 1612 - 1625	Angelo Sala notices that powdered nitrate of silver is blackened by the sun.
Robert Boyle, a founder of the Royal Society, reports that silver chloride turns dark under exposure, but apparently believes that this is due to exposure to the air, rather than light (if he had only known.)	Mid 1600's	.	.	.
.	.	.	1725 - 1727	Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that certain chemicals, mainly a mixture of chalk and silver halides, turn dark when exposed to light.
The Camera Obscura as a portable box starts to appear, laying the groundwork for the ideas of photography as we know it.	Mid 1700's	.	..To view 18th & 19th century Camera Obscuras please click here. (The obscura site will open in a new window.)
			1760	Tiphaigne de la Roche predicts photography in Giphantie.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele proves ammonia stabalizes darkened silver salts.	1777
			1786	Gilles-Louis Chrétien develops the Physionotrace for profile portraits.
Robert Barker opens up the first Panorama, prototype of future movie houses.	1794
.		.	1802	Thomas Wedgewood attempts, at first unsuccessfully, to use silver halides along with the camera obscura (see above, Mid 1700's, for a link to camera obscuras) to record an image. He ultimately does succeed but his images are not permanent.
William Hyde Wollaston invents the camera lucida.	1806
			1816	Joseph Nicéphone Niépce's attempts at photography, which he calls heliography (sundrawing,) records a view from his workroom window on paper sensitized with silver chloride, but he is only partially able to fix the image.
Sir John Hershel discovers the photographic fixative hyposulfite of soda.	1819
			1822	Niépce succeeds in obtaining a photographic copy of an engraving superimposed on glass.
The invention of the Thaumatrope, a "persistence of vision" toy, is credited to John Ayrton Paris. Niépce, using a camera, makes a view from his workroom window on a pewter plate.	1826
			1827	Charles Wheatstone describes a moving shutter.
Joseph Nicéphone Niépce produces the first successful picture using material that hardens in light. The exposure to light takes eight hours.	June / July 1827	.	.	.
.	.	.	4 Jan. 1829	Niépce partners with Louis J. M. Daguerre.
Joseph Plateau builds the Phenakisticope, an optical toy, that creates the illusion of movement by mounting drawings on the face of a slotted, twirling disk. Wheatstone invents a non-photographic stereoscopic viewing device.	1832	.	.	.
.	.		1833	Niépce dies four years after their partnership begins but Daguerre keeps experimenting. He soon finds a way of developing photographic plates which reduces the exposure time from the previous eight hours to thirty minutes. He also finds that by immersing the plates in salt water, the images can be made permanent. William Henry Fox Talbot begins experimenting with photogenic drawings.
Talbot works on a competing process to Daguerre's which he calls Calotype. He produces the earliest known paper negative which is one inch small and poor in quality compared to Daguerre's. The problem though that faces Daguerre's process is that it is expensive and can not be copied whereas the Calotype can.	1835	.	Talbot's first paper negative, the lattice window in the South Gallery, Lacock Abbey, August 1835. (2)
	.		1837	Daguerre creates his first photo using his process which he later names daguerrotype.
Talbot presents a paper on his process to the Royal Society.	31 January 1839	.	.
	.	.	July 1839	A report on Daguerre's process to the Acadamy of Sciences in Paris leads the French Government to purchase the rights.
Daguerre's process is made public and he names his process Daguerreotype.	19 August 1839		.
First North American photo taken Oct. or Nov. 1839. (3)			October / November 1839	First photograph in North America is taken. Photographer is unknown.
Giroux Daguerrotype camera, the first camera to be commercially manufactured, is introduced. Alexander Wolcott receives first American patent in photography for his camera. The Petzval lens is introduced. Hippolyte Bayard produces direct-positive images on sensitized paper.	.1839		.
	.	.	1840	Talbot makes improvements to his process but, depending on the quality of paper used, imperfections bleed through the photo when a positive is made.
Talbot patents his Calotype process.	1841		.
	.		1844	Talbot publishes Pencil of Nature.
Mathew Brady begins to photograph famous persons of his time, including Daniel Webster, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper.	1845		.
	.	.	Mid 1840's	Many experiment with a glass base for the negative but the silver solution does not stick to the glass surface. American photographers Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes become known for their distinctive daguerreotype portraits. Well-known American figures of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Webster, and Oliver Wendell Holmes are photographed by Southworth and Hawes.
Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor, a cousin of Nicéphore Niépce, perfects a process of coating the glass with egg whites sensitized with potassium iodide and washed with an acid solution of silver nitrate. The process, called albumen, brings fine detail to photos but is a very slow process, therefore portrait taking is not yet possible.	.1848	.	.
Typical stereo-optical card.		.	1849	Stereophotography, which uses a double lens camera to produce two views that together produce a three- dimensional view, is developed. Maxime Du Camp travels to Egypt to photograph monuments.

.	.TOP			NEXT >>>

Photo Credits:

1 www2.deakin.edu.au/Ed_unit_dev/arts_ed/Vis_Arts/

2 www.r-cube.co.uk/fox-talbot/history.html

3 Family Chronicle Magazine

4 Library of Congress Manuscript Division

5 Eastman Kodak Co., Inc

6 Wilson/Wiggins photographic collection