"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.
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.
Today, when you snap a picture and have it
developed so easily, it's hard to believe that hundreds
of years of experimenting were needed before this became
possible.
Photography was not invented by any single person. Just
to give you an idea of what went into bringing it to its
present age of perfection, here is a quick outline of
the history of photography.
Between the 11th and 16th centuries, man had "the camera
obscura". This enabled him to show on paper an image
which could be traced ny hand to give accurate drawings
of natural scenes. It didn't really "take" a picture.
In 1568, Daniello Barbaro fitted the camera abscura wuth
a lens and a changeable opening to sharpen the image. In
1802, Thomas Wedgwood and Sir Humphery Davy recorded
silhouettes and images of paintings on coated paper by
contact printing, but they couldn't make the prints
permanent.
In 1816, Joseph Niepce made a crude photographic camera
from a jewel box and a lens taken from a microscope. He
was able to make a negative image. In 1835, William
Talbot was the first to make positives from negatives,
the first to make permanent images.
In 1839, Louis Daguerre announced the Daguerreotype
process, which recorded the image on silver plate. More
and more development were contributed by individuals all
over the world as time went on. Many of them are too
technical to discuss here, but as you see, it was a long
slow process of growth.
Finally, in 1888, a box camera was put on the market,
developed by the Eastman Dry Plate and Film company,
using the Kodak system. the camera was sold already
loaded with enough film for 100 exposures. the pictures
were 2.5 inch diameter size. After exposure, camera and
film were returned to Rochester, where the film was
removed and processed and the camera reloaded and
returned to the customer.
This box camera was probably the beginning of popular
photography as we know it today when billions of
pictures are taken every year by people all over the
world.
Farrukh Pervaiz
