Photography has evolved over thousands of years from early concepts of the camera obscura to the first permanent photographs in the 1820s to advances that made photography accessible to the masses in the late 1800s. Key developments included the camera obscura being described centuries BC, silver salts being discovered in the 1500s-1600s allowing for fixed images, the first permanent photograph using bitumen plates in 1826, Daguerre's invention of the daguerreotype process in 1839, the introduction of photographic film and the Kodak camera in the late 1880s which enabled snapshot photography, and the shift to digital photography beginning in the 1980s.

2. Photography – meaning
‘drawing or writing in light’
A brief history of ‘writing in light’
The Camera (Qamara)
EPISODE ONE

3. It only took....
2500 years or 130,250 weeks
to arrive

4. Early History...A Surprise!
• Photography is the result of combining several discoveries.
• 5th & 4th Century BC - Chinese philosopher Mo Ti & Greek
mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid described a pinhole camera
• In the 6th century AD - Byzantine mathematician Anthemus of
Tralles used a type of camera obscura in his experiments.
• 965 in Basra – c. 1040 in Cairo - Ibn al-Haytham(Alhazen) studied
the camera obscura and pinhole camera.
• 1206-80 Saint Alburtus Magnus discovered silver nitrate.
• 1516-71 Georges Fabricius discovered silver chloride.
• 1568 - Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm ( Aperture )
• 1694 - Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals
(photochemical effect).
• 1729–74 - The novel Giphantie by Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what
could be interpreted as photography.
• 1955 – Tone was born...So you can have this presentation, bless him!

5. The camera obscura
Early photo folk ( homo
nikonicus blanko pict-
erectus ) had no way to
preserve images produced by
camera obscuras apart from
manually tracing the images.
Some early obscuras - were
room sized & known to exist
in the Arab world.
Hence the word Camera
coming from the Arab ....
Qamara
Camera Obscura means......The Darkened Chamber

6. Late Iberian- Homo nikonicus erectus...
pretends he has a qamara

7. ...examples of camera obscura

8. Why is the image projected upside
down camera obscura or pin hole?
Light travels in a straight line, which means rays
from above the pinhole will pass through it
and hit the bottom of the wall opposite. Rays
from below the pinhole will hit the top of the
back wall; hence, forming the upside down
image.

9. Now you get to make your own
Camera Obscura
• Get a Pringles tube & remove opened end.
• Insert a rolled piece of black paper inside the
tube, to make the inside dark.
• Poke a pinhole in one end about 1.5mm diameter
& leave in place.
• Remove other end & place a piece of tracing or
greaseproof paper neatly on the open end –
secure with cellotape.
• There you have it – go point it at something
bright

10. And now for some really old photos...
Daguerreotype camera 1839 – Lens by Charles Chevalier

11. 1826-First permanent photograph
By French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce – On bitumen/pewter plate
9,700 Weeks ago!

12. Daguerre copper plate with silver then
iodine vapour treated to make light
sensitive
1835 Louis Daguerre - First ever photograph of people

13. 1861 First Colour Photograph
Tartan ribbon by Thomas Sutton & James Clerk Maxwell.

14. Thomas Sutton & James Clerk
Maxwell. – father of electromagnetism
• The image of a tartan ribbon is the
first-ever permanent colour
photograph, and it was taken 150
years ago with the legendary scientist
James Clerk Maxwell.
• In order to illustrate a lecture on
colour vision on May 17, 1861, Clerk
Maxwell asked Thomas Sutton, a
photography innovator in his own
right who had invented the first
camera with a wide-angle lens, to
take three separate photographs of a
tartan ribbon, each time using a
different filter. The result was the first
colour photograph, and so the three-
color process was born.

15. 1849 Calotype print
American photographer Frederick Langenheim. Caption says Talbotype process

16. 1839 - One of the oldest portraits
known by Joseph Draper New York
Portrait is of Anna Katherine Draper the photographers sister.

17. 1855 – Punch
cartoon satirizing
problems with
posing for
Daguerrotypes
slight movement
during exposure,
resulting in
blurred pics

18. 19th Century studio set up- note the
head clamp

19. 1855 – Fenton’s photographic van
150 years later
Roger Fenton & Philip Delamotte helped popularise photography & recorded
the construction & de-construction of the Crystal Palace

20. 1854 - The Crystal Palace, Sydenham
By Philip Henry Delamotte

21. Bit about photographic plates
• Plates preceded photographic film as a
target medium in photography.
• A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts
was applied to a glass plate.
• This form of photographic material
largely faded from the consumer market
in the early years of the 20th century, as
more convenient and less fragile films Negative Plate
were introduced.
• Photographic plates were still in use by
some photography businesses until the
1970s and were in wide use by the
professional astronomical community as
late as the 1990s.
Agfa Plates c1880

22. 1885-1889...Along comes film
• 1885 George Eastman
manufactured paper film
• 1889 Switched to celluloid
• 1888/89 First camera called the
Kodak
• By end of 19th century produced
several inexpensive camera
models resulting in the snapshot
concept
• 1960 The Brownie was so popular
various models remained on sale
until the 1960s

23. So now we have the
beginnings of fixed images.
The birth of modern
photography
in 1885-1889
In 1900 George Eastman
took to the mass market
with the Brownie box
(snapshot) camera.
Pre loaded with 100 Kodak No 2 Brownie box camera
c.1910 by George Eastman
exposures Use it and send it back to the factory
for developing and re reloading
5,835 Weeks ago!

24. Next episode – from film to digital &
spy satellites....
1981 Sony Mavica 1st digital camera ever!
1651 weeks ago!

26. ‘Cheers Tone..great presentation..hic!