History of the camera

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Camera obscura, from a manuscript of military designs. Seventeenth century, possibly Italian.

The first photograph was taken approximately 1817 by Nicéphore Niépce[1] using cameras of his

own making. Later, in 1827, he made images using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles
and Vincent Chevalier in Paris, France; the photograph though was not permanent and it faded.
Niépce built on a discovery by Johann Heinrich Schultz (1724): a silver and chalk mixture darkens
under exposure to light. While this was the introduction of photography, thehistory of the
camera can be traced back much further. Photographic cameras were a development of
the camera obscura, a device dating back to the Book of Optics (1021) of the Iraqi Arab
scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen),[2] which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene
outside upside-down onto a viewing surface.

Scientist-monk Roger Bacon also studied the matter. Bacon's notes and drawings, published
as Perspectiva in 1267, are partly clouded with theological material describing how the Devil can
insinuate himself through the pinhole by magic,[3] and it is not clear whether or not he produced
such a device. On 24 January 1544 mathematician and instrument maker Reiners Gemma
Frisius of Leuven University used one to watch a solar eclipse, publishing a diagram of his method
in De Radio Astronimica et Geometrico in the following year.[4] In 1558 Giovanni Batista della
Porta was the first to recommend the method as an aid to drawing.[5]

Before the invention of photographic processes there was no way to preserve the images
produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing them. The earliest cameras were room-
sized, with space for one or more people inside; these gradually evolved into more and more
compact models such as that by Niépce's time portable handheld cameras suitable for
photography were readily available. The first camera that was small and portable enough to be
practical for photography was built by Johann Zahn in 1685, though it would be almost 150 years
before such an application was possible.

Contents

 [hide]

1 First exposure

2 Daguerreotypes and calotypes

3 Dry plates

4 Kodak and the birth of film

5 35 mm

6 TLRs and SLRs

7 Instant cameras

8 Automation

9 Digital Cameras

o 9.1 Early development

o 9.2 Analog electronic

cameras

o 9.3 The arrival of true

digital cameras

10 See also

11 References

12 External links

[edit]First exposure
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph by coating a pewter plate with bitumen and
exposing the plate to light in France in 1827. [6] The bitumen hardened where light struck. The
unhardened areas were then dissolved away. The camera has been improved in many ways, and
the shape and size has been updated throughout history to fit modern times.

[edit]Daguerreotypes and calotypes

Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (who was Daguerre's partner, but died before their
invention was completed) invented the first practical photographic method, which was named the
daguerreotype, in 1836. Daguerre coated a copper plate with silver, then treated it with iodine|
iodine vapour to make it sensitive to light. The image was developed by mercury vapor and fixed
with a strong solution of ordinary salt. William Fox Talbot perfected a different process, the
calotype, in 1840. Both used cameras that were little different from Zahn's model, with a sensitized
plate or sheet of paper placed in front of the viewing screen to record the image. Focusing was
generally via sliding boxes.

[edit]Dry plates

19th century studio camera

Collodion dry plates had been available since 1855, thanks to the work of Désiré van Monckhoven,
but it was not until the invention of the gelatine dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox that
they rivaled wet plates in speed and quality. Also, for the first time, cameras could be made small
enough to be hand-held, or even concealed. There was a proliferation of various designs, from
single- and twin-lens reflexes to large and bulky field cameras, handheld cameras, and even
cameras disguised as pocket watches, hats, or other objects.

The shortened exposure times that made candid photography possible also necessitated another
innovation, the mechanical shutter. The very first shutters were separate accessories, though built-
in shutters were common by the turn of the century.

[edit]Kodak and the birth of film

Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera, circa 1910

The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing
paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the
"Kodak," was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens
and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average
consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent
back to thefactory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th
century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding
cameras.

In 1900, Eastman took mass-market photography one step further with the Brownie, a simple and
very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was
extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

Film also allowed the movie camera to develop from an expensive toy to a practical commercial
tool.

Despite the advances in low-cost photography made possible by Eastman, plate cameras still
offered higher-quality prints and remained popular well into the 20th century. To compete with
rollfilm cameras, which offered a larger number of exposures per loading, many inexpensive plate
cameras from this era were equipped with magazines to hold several plates at once. Special backs
for plate cameras allowing them to use film packs or rollfilm were also available, as were backs
that enabled rollfilm cameras to use plates.

Except for a few special types such as Schmidt cameras, most professional astrographs continued
to use plates until the end of the century when electronic photography replaced them.

[edit]35 mm

Leica I, 1925
Argus C3, 1939

See also:  History of 135 film

Oskar Barnack, who was in charge of research and development at Leitz, decided to investigate
using 35 mm cine film for still cameras while attempting to build a compact cameracapable of
making high-quality enlargements. He built his prototype 35 mm camera (Ur-Leica) around 1913,
though further development was delayed for several years by World War I. Leitz test-marketed the
design between 1923 and 1924, receiving enough positive feedback that the camera was put into
production as the Leica I (for Leitz camera) in 1925. The Leica's immediate popularity spawned a
number of competitors, most notably the Contax (introduced in 1932), and cemented the position
of 35 mm as the format of choice for high-end compact cameras.

Kodak got into the market with the Retina I in 1938, which introduced the 135 cartridge used in all
modern 35 mm cameras. Although the Retina was comparatively inexpensive, 35 mm cameras
were still out of reach for most people and rollfilm remained the format of choice for mass-market
cameras. This changed in 1936 with the introduction of the inexpensive Argus A and to an even
greater extent in 1939 with the arrival of the immensely popular Argus C3.Although the cheapest
cameras still used rollfilm, 35 mm film had come to dominate the market by the time the C3 was
discontinued in 1966.

The fledgling Japanese camera industry began to take off in 1936 with the Canon 35 mm
rangefinder, an improved version of the 1933 Kwanon prototype. Japanese cameras would begin
to become popular in the West after Korean War veterans and soldiers stationed in Japan brought
them back to the United States and elsewhere.

[edit]TLRs and SLRs

See also:  History of the single-lens reflex camera

A historic camera: the Contax S of 1949 — the first pentaprism SLR

Asahiflex IIb, 1954

The successful Leica M3 rangefinder camera, introduced in 1954

Nikon F of 1959 — the first system camera

The first practical reflex camera was the Franke & Heidecke Rolleiflex medium format TLR of
1928. Though both single- and twin-lens reflex cameras had been available for decades, they were
too bulky to achieve much popularity. The Rolleiflex, however, was sufficiently compact to achieve
widespread popularity and the medium-format TLR design became popular for both high- and low-
end cameras.

A similar revolution in SLR design began in 1933 with the introduction of the Ihagee Exakta, a

compact SLR which used 127 rollfilm. This was followed three years later by the first Western SLR
to use 35mm film, the Kine Exakta (World's first true 35mm SLR was Soviet "Sport" camera,
marketed several months before Kine Exakta, though "Sport" used its own film cartridge). The
35mm SLR design gained immediate popularity and there was an explosion of new models and
innovative features after World War II. There were also a few 35mm TLRs, the best-known of
which was the Contaflex of 1935, but for the most part these met with little success.

The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the
Hungarian Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the Contax S, the first camera to use
a pentaprism. Prior to this, all SLRs were equipped with waist-level focusing screens. The Duflex
was also the first SLR with an instant-return mirror, which prevented the viewfinder from being
blacked out after each exposure. This same time period also saw the introduction of theHasselblad
1600F, which set the standard for medium format SLRs for decades.

In 1952 the Asahi Optical Company (which later became well-known for its Pentax cameras)
introduced the first Japanese SLR using 35mm film, the Asahiflex. Several other Japanese camera
makers also entered the SLR market in the 1950s, including Canon, Yashica, andNikon. Nikon's
entry, the Nikon F, had a full line of interchangeable components and accessories and is generally
regarded as the first system camera. It was the F, along with the earlier S series of rangefinder
cameras, that helped establish Nikon's reputation as a maker of professional-quality equipment.
[edit]Instant cameras

Polaroid Model J66, 1961

While conventional cameras were becoming more refined and sophisticated, an entirely new type
of camera appeared on the market in 1948. This was the Polaroid Model 95, the world's first
viable instant-picture camera. Known as a Land Camera after its inventor, Edwin Land, the Model
95 used a patented chemical process to produce finished positive prints from the exposed
negatives in under a minute. The Land Camera caught on despite its relatively high price and the
Polaroid lineup had expanded to dozens of models by the 1960s. The first Polaroid camera aimed
at the popular market, the Model 20 Swinger of 1965, was a huge success and remains one of the
top-selling cameras of all time.

[edit]Automation

Andrew Chan had made the camera to feature automatic windows exposure was the seleniumlight
meter-equipped, fully-automatic Super Kodak Six-20 of 1938, but its extremely high price (for the
time) of $225 (3507 in present terms[7]) kept it from achieving any degree of success. By the
1960s, however, low-cost electronic components were commonplace and cameras equipped with
light meters and automatic exposure systems became increasingly widespread.

The next technological advance came in 1960, when the German Mec 16 SB subminiaturebecame

the first camera to place the light meter behind the lens for more accurate metering.
However, through-the-lens metering ultimately became a feature more commonly found on SLRs
than other types of camera; the first SLR equipped with a TTL system was the Topcon RE
Super of 1962.

[edit]Digital Cameras

Digital cameras differ from their analog predecessors primarily in that they do not use film, but
capture and save photographs on digital memory cards or internal storage instead. Their low
operating costs have relegated chemical cameras to niche markets. Digital cameras now include
wireless communication capabilities (for example Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) to transfer, print or share
photos, and are commonly found on mobile phones.

[edit]Early development
The concept of digitizing images on scanners, and the concept of digitizing video signals, predate
the concept of making still pictures by digitizing signals from an array of discrete sensor
elements. Eugene F. Lally of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory described a mosaic photosensor at the
focal plane of cameras for an onboard guidance and navigation system operating in the digital
domain on spacecraft at a 1961 space conference . [8] At Philips Labs. in New York, Edward
Stupp, Pieter Cath and Zsolt Szilagyi filed for a patent on "All Solid State Radiation Imagers" on 6
September 1968 and constructed a flat-screen target for receiving and storing an optical image on
a matrix composed of an array of photodiodes connected to a capacitor to form an array of two
terminal devices connected in rows and columns. Their US patent was granted on 10 November
1970.[9] Texas Instruments engineer Willis Adcock designed a filmless camera that was not digital
and applied for a patent in 1972, but it is not known whether it was ever built. [10] The first recorded
attempt at building a digital camera was in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman
Kodak.[11][12] It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild
Semiconductor in 1973.[13] The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white
images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23
seconds to capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical
exercise, not intended for production.

[edit]Analog electronic cameras

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged andremoved. (July 2009)

Sony Mavica

Handheld electronic cameras, in the sense of a device meant to be carried and used like a
handheld film camera, appeared in 1981 with the demonstration of the Sony Mavica (Magnetic
Video Camera). This is not to be confused with the later cameras by Sony that also bore the
Mavica name. This was an analog camera, in that it recorded pixel signals continuously, as
videotape machines did, without converting them to discrete levels; it recorded television-like
signals to a 2 × 2 inch "video floppy".[14] In essence it was a video movie camera that recorded
single frames, 50 per disk in field mode and 25 per disk in frame mode. The image quality was
considered equal to that of then-current televisions.

Canon RC-701

Analog electronic cameras do not appear to have reached the market until 1986 with the Canon
RC-701. Canon demonstrated a prototype of this model at the 1984 Summer Olympics, printing
the images in the Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. In the United States, the first
publication to use these cameras for real reportage was USA Today, in its coverage of World
Series baseball. Several factors held back the widespread adoption of analog cameras; the cost
(upwards of $20,000), poor image quality compared to film, and the lack of quality affordable
printers. Capturing and printing an image originally required access to equipment such as a frame
grabber, which was beyond the reach of the average consumer. The "video floppy" disks later had
several reader devices available for viewing on a screen, but were never standardized as a
computer drive.

The early adopters tended to be in the news media, where the cost was negated by the utility and
the ability to transmit images by telephone lines. The poor image quality was offset by the low
resolution of newspaper graphics. This capability to transmit images without a satellite link was
useful during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

US government agencies also took a strong interest in the still video concept, notably the US Navy
for use as a real time air-to-sea surveillance system.

The first analog electronic camera marketed to consumers may have been the Canon RC-250
Xapshot in 1988. A notable analog camera produced the same year was the Nikon QV-1000C,
designed as a press camera and not offered for sale to general users, which sold only a few
hundred units. It recorded images in greyscale, and the quality in newspaper print was equal to
film cameras. In appearance it closely resembled a modern digital single-lens reflex camera.
Images were stored on video floppy disks.
Silicon Film, a proposed digital sensor cartridge for film cameras that would allow 35 mm cameras
to take digital photographs without modification was announced in late 1998. Silicon Film was to
work like a roll of 35 mm film, with a 1.3 megapixel sensor behind the lens and a battery and
storage unit fitting in the film holder in the camera. The product, which was never released,
became increasingly obsolete due to improvements in digital camera technology and affordability.
Silicon Films' parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. [15]

[edit]The arrival of true digital cameras

Nikon D1 digital camera of 1999

The first true digital camera that recorded images as a computerized file was likely the Fuji DS-
1P of 1988, which recorded to a 16 MB internal memory card that used a battery to keep the data
in memory. This camera was never marketed in the United States, and has not been confirmed to
have shipped even in Japan.

The first commercially available digital camera was the 1990 Dycam Model 1; it also sold as
the Logitech Fotoman. It used a CCD image sensor, stored pictures digitally, and connected
directly to a computer for download.[16][17][18]

In 1991, Kodak brought to market the Kodak DCS-100, the beginning of a long line of
professional Kodak DCS SLR cameras that were based in part on film bodies, often Nikons. It
used a 1.3 megapixel sensor and was priced at $13,000.

The move to digital formats was helped by the formation of the first JPEG and MPEGstandards in
1988, which allowed image and video files to be compressed for storage. The first consumer
camera with a liquid crystal display on the back was the Casio QV-10 in 1995, and the first camera
to use CompactFlash was the Kodak DC-25 in 1996.

The marketplace for consumer digital cameras was originally low resolution (either analog or
digital) cameras built for utility. In 1997 the first megapixel cameras for consumers were marketed.
The first camera that offered the ability to record video clips may have been theRicoh RDC-1 in
1995.
1999 saw the introduction of the Nikon D1, a 2.74 megapixel camera that was the first digital
SLR developed entirely by a major manufacturer, and at a cost of under $6,000 at introduction was
affordable by professional photographers and high end consumers. This camera also used Nikon
F-mount lenses, which meant film photographers could use many of the same lenses they already
owned.

[edit]See also

 Single-lens reflex camera

 Digital camera

 History of photography

 Photographic lens design

[edit]References

1. ^ Newhall, Beaumont (1982). The History of Photography. New York, New York: The Museum
of Modern Art. p. 13. ISBN 0-87070-381-1. "Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, of Chalon-su-Saône in

central France, was more successful. Although the only example of his camera work that

remains today appears to have been made in 1827, his letters leave no doubt that he had

succeeded in fixing the camera's image a decade earlier."

2. ^ Nicholas J. Wade, Stanley Finger (2001), "The eye as an optical instrument: from camera
obscura to Helmholtz's perspective", Perception30 (10): 1157–1177

3. ^ Renner, Eric (1999). Pinhole photography. Oxford, England: Focal Press. pp. 6–8. ISBN 0-

240-80350-7.

4. ^ Renner (1999: 12)

5. ^ Gernsheim, Helmut (1965). A Concise History of Photography. London: Thames and
Hudson. pp. 3–6.

6. ^ Davenport, Alma (1999). The history of photography: an overview. Albuquerque, NM:

University of New Mexico Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-8263-2076-7.

7. ^ Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–2008. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Retrieved December 7, 2010.

8. ^ Eugene F. Lally, "Mosaic Guidance for Interplanetary Travel," Space Flight Report to the

Nation, pp. 2249–61, American Rocket Society,New York, 9–15 October 1961.

9. ^ US 3540011
10. ^ US 4057830 and US 4163256 were filed in 1972 but were only later awarded in 1976 and
1977. "1970s". Retrieved 15 June 2008.

11. ^ "Digital Photography Milestones from Kodak". Women in Photography International.

Retrieved 17 September 2007.

12. ^ "Kodak blog: We Had No Idea".

 13. ^ Michael R. Peres (2007). The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography (4th ed. ed.). Focal
Press. ISBN 0240807405.

14. ^ Kenji Toyoda (2006). "Digital Still Cameras at a Glance". In Junichi Nakamura. Image

sensors and signal processing for digital still cameras. CRC Press.

p. 5. ISBN 9780849335457.

15. ^ Askey, Phil (2001). "Silicon Film – vaporized-ware". Retrieved 20 February 2008.

16. ^ "1990". DigiCam History Dot Com. Retrieved 17 September 2007.
17. ^ "Dycam Model 1: The world's first consumer digital still camera". DigiBarn computer
museum.

18. ^ Carolyn Said, "DYCAM Model 1: The first portable Digital Still Camera", MacWeek, vol. 4,
No. 35, 16 Oct. 1990, p. 34.

 Wade, John, A Short History of the Camera. Watford: Fountain Press, 1979. ISBN 0-
85242-640-2.
[edit]External links