1000 Years of Photography History

1000 YEARS AGO   In 1021 

Arab scientist Alhazen defined the basic nature of light and optics scientifically in his seven-volume Book of Optics -- considered the most important book on the subject for the next 600 years.   

Alhazen was the first to use experimental methods and logical reasoning to define the essential aspects of light: that it emanated from an outside light source, that light travelled in rays, and that the rays travelled in straight lines. 

Although not the first to use a camera obscura, he was the first to describe how to construct one; in addition, he described how to magnify an object with a lens and to make a sharper projected image with a pinhole by reducing the size of the pinhole.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE CAMERA   

According to legend, the discovery of the camera may have begun thousands of years ago with desert nomads who saw scenes outside their tents projected upside down on the back wall when a tiny hole in their dark tent let in light during the bright day. 

This phenomenon was known even to the ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle, and others.

History Time Line of Photography

ancient times: Camera Obscura used to form images on walls in darkened rooms; image formation via a pinhole; 

16th century: Brightness and clarity of camera obscuras improved by enlarging the hole inserting a telescope lens; 

17th century: Camera obscuras in frequent use by artists and made portable in the form of sedan chairs; 

1727: Professor J. Schulze mixes chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask; notices darkening on side of the flask exposed to sunlight. Accidental creation of the first photo-sensitive compound; 

1800: Thomas Wedgwood makes "sun pictures" by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate; resulting images deteriorated rapidly, however, if displayed under light stronger than from candles. 

1816: Nicéphore Niépce combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper

1826: Niépce creates a permanent image 

1834: Henry Fox Talbot creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another sheet of paper.

1837: Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed" with warmed mercury; Daguerre is awarded a state pension by the French government in exchange for publication of methods and the rights by other French citizens to use the Daguerreotype process. 1841: Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype".

1851: Frederick Scott Archer, a sculptor in London, improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes, the negative/positive process permitted unlimited reproductions, and the process was published but not patented. 

1853: Nadar (Felix Toumachon) opens his portrait studio in Paris 

1854: Adolphe Disderi develops carte-de-visite photography in Paris, leading to a worldwide boom in portrait studios for the next decade 

1855: Beginning of a stereoscopic era 

1855-57: Direct positive images on glass (ambrotypes) and metal (tintypes or ferrotypes) popular in the US. 

1861: Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrates a colour photography system involving three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. The photos were turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same colour filters. This is the "colour separation" method. 

1861-65: Mathew Brady and staff (mostly staff) covers the American Civil War, exposing 7000 negatives 

1868: Ducas de Hauron publishes a book proposing a variety of methods for colour photography. 

1870: Center of the period in which the US Congress sent photographers out to the West. The most famous images were taken by William Jackson and Tim O'Sullivan. 

1871: Richard Leach Maddox, an English doctor, proposes the use of an emulsion of gelatin and silver bromide on a glass plate, the "dry plate" process. 

1877: Eadweard Muybridge, born in England as Edward Muggridge, settles "do a horse's four hooves ever leave the ground at once" bet among rich San Franciscans by time-sequenced photography of Leland Stanford's horse. 

1878: Dry plates being manufactured commercially. 1880: George Eastman, age 24, sets up Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York. The first half-tone photograph appears in a daily newspaper, the New York Graphic. 

1888: First Kodak camera, containing a 20-foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5-inch diameter circular pictures. 

1889: Improved Kodak camera with a roll of film instead of paper Like 368 A SITE FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS BY PHOTOGRAPHERS SEARCH FORUMS EQUIPMENT GALLERY SHARING COMMUNITY LEARNING REVIEWS STORE BLOG SIGN IN REGISTER History of Photography Timeline - photo.net http://photo.net/history/timeline 1 of 6 8/9/2013 5:47 PM Adding Textures to Flower Photos _About this image: With this shot of a setting sun seen through a cherry blossom, I focused on the flower blossoms, relying on the fact that throwing the sun way out-of-focus made it appear much... Latest Learning Articles Creating a Long-Exposure Effect in Photoshop Writing a Wedding Story with Must-Have Photographs Placing a Flower Photo on a Background Chanel Danièle Bott New $26.49 A History of the World in 100 Object... Neil MacGregor New $28.99 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Walker Evans, Jame... New $12.70 History and Practice of the Art of P... Henry Hunt Snellin... New Sebastiao Salgado. Genesis Lelia Wanick Salga... New $45.49 Photography and the American Civil W... Jeff L. Rosenheim New $32.30 Privacy Information 

1890: Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives, images of tenement life in New York City 

1900: Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera introduced.