The History of Photography's Origins

Did you ever wonder who's the brilliant man that started all of this? Have you thought what would it be like if we couldn't take pictures?

Photography is derived from the word photos that means light, and the word graphien that means to draw. This word was first used by Sir John Herschel in 1839. But the concept was formed in around 1000AD when Alhazen invented the first pinhole camera, popularly called Camera Obscura. It is the Latin translation for dark room. It is a dark box that has a small hole or lens where the light rays from an object pass through and a film or plate inside where the image is produced. However, the invention was not perfected since the images were generated upside down.

Camera Obscura was used mainly for viewing and drawing. It was only in 1827 when the first photographic image with the use of Camera Obscura was recorded by Joseph Niepce. It was prints of the sun as so called heliographs. However, images created by Niepce would require eight hours of exposure to light to form a picture and would soon go away.

This was later enhanced by Loius Daguerre whose goal was to reduce exposure time and prevent disappearance of the images and named the method daguerreotype.

Later on in 1841, Henry Talbot formulated the negative process and named it calotype. The background is black while the subject are in shades of grey.

In 1851 Frederick Archer invented the wet plate negative. Although this produced a more stable and detailed negative, its disadvantage is that you need to bring a darkroom with you in any place you take the picture so that it has been developed before the emulsion dries.

It evolved into tintypes by Hamilton Smith in 1856, which give a lighter shade than that of calotype. Then in 1879, dry plates were invented, which give rise to the possibility of having a hand held camera.

In 1889, George Eastman created the flexible roll film. It was only in 1940's that colored films were introduced to the market.

Those innovations have opened the future of photography that leads to the creation of image prints and the discovery of various photographic devices that we see today.