A Brief History of Photography

The forerunner to photography was the ability by artists to trace scenes onto canvas with the aid of projected images. They were able to do this from as early as the 16th century using the camera obscura and the camera lucida.

These early cameras were not able to fix an image. That did not happen until 1826 when a Frenchman named Nicéphore Niépce produced an image on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative. The exposure time as an incredible eight hours and he later went on to improve his photographic technique using a silver and chalk mixture which darkens when exposed to light.

Niépce refined the process further when he formed a partnership with Louis Daguerre. When Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre carried on his work.

Louis Daguerre, a former collaborator with Nicéphore Niépce in early photographic techniques, made a major break through in 1839 developing a process called daguerreotype.

This used silver on a copper plate and is still the basis of the process utilised today in Polaroids. The French government seized on the development and bought up the Daguerreotype patent.

There were also developments across the English Channel where William Fox Talbot was working on a similar process to the daguerreotype, but had kept his findings a secret. By 1840 he had invented the calotype process,which enabled him to produce positive prints.

Constant battles defending his patents saw Fox eventually give up his research in photography.

One of the early innovators in photographic technology was Slovene Janez Puhar who invented the process for putting photos on glass in 1841. This earned Puhar recognition at the French Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale on July 17th 1852.

A year earlier Frederick Scott Archer developed the collodion process, which was used by children's author Lewis Carroll, whose photos are popular to this day.

Meanwhile,the daguerreotype photographic process,developed by Louis Daguerre in the late 1830s, was enjoying continuing popularity as the demand for photos continued to grow.

But Daguerreotype photos were expensive to produce. This led to a revival in William Fox Talbot's inspired, but secret process.

The popularity of daguerreotype photographs was because they could provide portrait pictures far quicker than the traditional oil painting. Also the growth of the middle class, with artistic pretensions and the cash to spend, led to growth in demand for portraits. But the cost of a photo was very high, exceeding £1,000 at today' prices.

As well as the expense there were other problems with daguerreotype photographs. Copies of these photos were difficult to produce and they were also fragile, meaning that as well as costing a small fortune they could be easily destroyed.

The solution to this problem was to be handed to the chemists who sought to improve the process of producing photographs.

The move to photography as we know it today occurred in the late 19th century. George Eastman developed a process which removed the need for photographic plates and toxic chemicals to be carried around by photographers. The new format involved dry gel on paper or film.

With the launch of the Eastman Kodak camera in the summer of 1888, virtually anyone could take photographs. The slogan was "You press the button, we do the rest" and in 1901 the first mass appeal camera - the Kodak Brownie - was put on the market.

Quality improved with the introduction of 35mm film - the 35mm Leica camera was introduced in 1925.

Subsequent developments in photography have been remarkable, as colour film, automatic focus and digital cameras have achieved popularity.