History of Photography
Pinhole Cameras to The Daguerreotype
"Photography" is derived from the Greek words photos ("light") and graphein ("to draw") The word was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839. It is a method of recording images by the action of light, or related radiation, on a sensitive material.Pinhole Camera
Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), a great authority on optics in the Middle Ages who lived around 1000AD, invented the first pinhole camera, (also called the Camera Obscura} and was able to explain why the images were upside down. The first casual reference to the optic laws that made pinhole cameras possible, was observed and noted by Aristotle around 330 BC, who questioned why the sun could make a circular image when it shined through a square hole.The First Photograph
On a summer day in 1827, Joseph Nicephore Niepce made the first photographic image with a camera obscura. Prior to Niepce people just used the camera obscura for viewing or drawing purposes not for making photographs. Joseph Nicephore Niepce's heliographs or sun prints as they were called were the prototype for the modern photograph, by letting light draw the picture. Niepce placed an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen, and then exposed it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image, until then invisible, appeared. However, Niepce's photograph required eight hours of light exposure to create and after appearing would soon fade away.Louis Jacques Mande DAGUERRE (1787-1851)
The daguerreotype process was the
first practicable method of obtaining permanent images with a camera. The man
who gave his name to the process and perfected the method of producing direct
positive images on a silver-coated copper plate was Louis Jacques Mande
Daguerre, a French artist and scenic painter. Daguerre had began experimenting
with ways of fixing the images formed by the camera obscura around 1824, but in
1829 he entered into partnership with Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833), a
French amateur scientist and inventor who, in 1826, had succeeded in securing a
picture of the view from his window by using a a camera obscura and a pewter
plate coated with bitumen. Niepce called his picture-making process heliography
("sun drawing"), but although he had managed to produce a permanent
image using a camera, the exposure time was around 8 hours. Niepce later
abandoned pewter plates in favour of silver-plated sheets of copper and
discovered that the vapour from iodine reacted with the silver coating to
produce silver iodide, a light sensitive compound.
After the death of Niepce in 1833,
Daguerre continued to experiment with copper plates coated with silver iodide
to produce direct positive pictures. Daguerre discovered that the latent image
on an exposed plate could be brought out or "developed" with the
fumes from warmed mercury. The use of mercury vapour meant that photographic
images could be produced in twenty to thirty minutes rather than hours. In
1837, Daguerre found a way of "fixing" the photographic images with a
solution of common salt. Two years later, he followed the suggestion of Sir
John Herschel (1792-1871) and adopted hyposulphate of soda (now thiosulphate of
soda ) as the fixing agent.
Daguerre began making successful
pictures using his improved process from 1837. On 19th August,1839, at a
meeting in Paris, the Daguerreotype Process was revealed to the world.
In England, Richard Beard
(1801-1885), a former coal merchant and patent speculator, bought the patent to
Alexander Wolcott's mirror camera and employed the services of John Frederick
Goddard (1795-1866), a chemist, to find a way of reducing exposure times to
less than a few minutes, thereby making it possible to take daguerreotype
portraits. On 23rd March 1841, Richard Beard opened England’s first
daguerreotype portrait studio in London's Regent Street. In June 1841, Beard
purchased from Daguerre the patent rights to the daguerreotype process in
England
The Birth of Modern Photography
Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the first practical process of photography. In 1829, he formed a partnership with Joseph Nicephore Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed. In 1839 after several years of experimentation and Niepce's death, Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography, naming it after himself - the daguerreotype.Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.
In 1839, Daguerre and Niepce's son sold the rights for the daguerreotype to the French government and published a booklet describing the process. The daguerreotype gained popularity quickly; by 1850, there were over seventy daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.
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