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OK, so who invented photography?

Tony Lockerbie , Aug 24, 2010; 08:54 p.m.

I know that you all want the answer to this!
My research goes back to 350BC, Aistotle. He apparently discovered the principle of the camera obscura.
Followed by Pliny the Elder, who discovered that "air" darkened silver salts in 100AD
1568....Barbaro puts a lens onto the camera obscura.
1727.....Schultz works out that silver salts are light sensitive.
1802....Wedgewood puts siver salts onto paper.
1826....Niepce, bitumen prints onto metal plates.
1835.....Fox Talbot makes permanent negatives in a camera (now we are getting somewhere!)
1839....Daguerre, positive photos on a metal plate.
1839.....Herschel uses Hypo as a fixer.
1840....Fox Talbot, negative/positive process....on a roll now!
1847....Niepce, glass plates for negatives.
1851....Scott Archer, wet plate process (popular again now)
1860....Clerk Maxwell, "colour" photography.
1871....Maddox, gelatin dry plates.
1873.....Vogel, Sensitising dyes.
1878......Bennett, ripening of emulsions to make them more sensitive.
1888....George Eastman, Roll film, and cameras to use it in.
1894....Eastman again, celluloid film.
1907....Lumiere....colour photography in normal cameras.
There you go, hope that wasn't too boring!


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Chris Leong , Aug 24, 2010; 09:25 p.m.

From Wiki:
Discovery and origins Camera obscura
The first mention of the principles behind the pinhole camera, a precursor to the camera obscura, belongs to Mo-Ti (470 BC to 390 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohism.[1] Mo-Ti referred to this camera as a "collecting plate" or "locked treasure room". [2] The Mohist tradition is unusual in Chinese thought because it is concerned with developing principles of logic.
In the 6th century, Byzantine mathematician and architect Anthemius of Tralles (most famous for designing the Hagia Sophia), used a type of camera obscura in his experiments[3].
One of the first camerae obscurae was built by the scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham, born in Basra (965–1039 AD), known in the West as Alhacen or Alhazen, who carried out practical experiments on optics in his Book of Optics.[4] [edit]
History Camera obscura, from a manuscript of military designs. Seventeenth century, possibly Italian.
Although the pinhole camera and camera obscura are sometimes credited to Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 965–1039),[4] for the first clear description[5] and correct analysis[6] of the device and for first describing how an image is formed in the eye using the camera obscura as an analogy.[7]
However, primitive forms of a camera obscura were known to earlier scholars since the time of Mozi and Aristotle.
Euclid's Optics (ca 300 BC), presupposed the camera obscura as a demonstration that light travels in straight lines.[8]
When Ibn al-Haytham began experimenting with the camera obscura phenomenon, he stated (in Latin translation), Et nos non inventimus ita, "we did not invent this".[9]
In the 4th century BC, Aristotle noted that "sunlight travelling through small openings between the leaves of a tree, the holes of a sieve, the openings wickerwork, and even interlaced fingers will create circular patches of light on the ground."
In the 4th century AD, Theon of Alexandria observed how "candlelight passing through a pinhole will create an illuminated spot on a screen that is directly in line with the aperture and the center of the candle."
Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics (1021) was the first to demonstrate this with his lamp experiment where several different light sources are arranged across a large area, and he was thus the first scientist to successfully project an entire image from outdoors onto a screen indoors with the camera obscura.[10]
Several decades after Ibn al-Haytham's death, the Song Dynasty Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) experimented with camera obscura, and was the first to apply geometrical and quantitative attributes to it in his book of 1088 AD, the Dream Pool Essays.[11]
However, Shen Kuo alluded to the fact that the Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written in about 840 AD by Duan Chengshi (d. 863) during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) mentioned inverting the image of a Chinese pagoda tower beside a seashore.[11]
In fact, Shen makes no assertion that he was the first to experiment with such a device.[11]
Shen wrote of Cheng's book: "[Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang] said that the image of the pagoda is inverted because it is beside the sea, and that the sea has that effect. This is nonsense. It is a normal principle that the image is inverted after passing through the small hole."[11]

Steve Levine , Aug 24, 2010; 09:31 p.m.

I don't know who actually is credited with photography's invention? I've always found it fascinating though that Nicéphorus Niépce in France, and John Fox Talbot in England ,were both experimenting with such similar compounds, completely unbeknown to one another.

Tony Lockerbie , Aug 24, 2010; 10:19 p.m.

Thanks Chris, I should have known that the Chinese would feature here, they invented....well....everything really!

Zane Johnson , Aug 24, 2010; 10:21 p.m.

Good stuff! -- kind of like asking "who invented soup?"

Vick Vickery , Aug 24, 2010; 10:52 p.m.

It was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great Uncle Ed. :-)

Dave Lee , Aug 24, 2010; 10:53 p.m.

If you take a photo of a tree falling in the woods, did it make a sound?

Mike Gammill , Aug 24, 2010; 11:09 p.m.

There may have been even earlier discoveries, especially with pinhole images, but they might have never been published or possibly lost. So much of the classical world was lost after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. If one could, for example, travel back in time and browse the great library in Alexandria, who knows what we would find. Thanks for the run down on photo history. It really makes one appreciate what we have today.

Matthew Rusbarsky , Aug 24, 2010; 11:09 p.m.

The more I play with cameras, the more I appreciate the eyes in my head (poor as my eyesight may be). Ultimate credit for imaging technology goes to the blind watchmaker or divine power, depending on your persuasion.

Lauren MacIntosh , Aug 24, 2010; 11:46 p.m.

I think myself their are all saying the same thing go take a picture: LOL

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