Long before George Eastman’s Kodak camera, rolled out in 1888, camera invention started with Camera Obscure. Between 965 AD–1040 AD, Ibn al-Haytham wrote about the working and design principles of this camera. To overcome the recording of the image formed by Camera Obscure or Pinhole Camera, inventors (i) Johann Heinrich Schulze, (ii) Carl Wilhelm Scheele, (iii) Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, (iv) Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, (v) William Henry Fox Talbot, (v) Richard Leach Maddox and others made formidable contributions. Without a doubt, George Eastman’s invention of photographic film, in 1889, shaped up the modern camera invention. Subsequently, continued advancement led to color photography’s invention in 1940.
In 1888, George Eastman rolled out his camera invention in the market. His Kodak camera was a handheld box camera containing a 100-exposure roll of film that used paper negatives. Before him, many other creative minds contributed to camera invention. In 1685, Johann Zahn, a seventeenth-century German author, designed the first camera. However, in 1826, Niépce clicked the earliest surviving ‘photograph’. This long-time gap is due to the fact that it took almost 150 years for the technology to mature to the point where Zahn design was possible to actually build.
However, in the Book of Optics (Kitab al-Manazer), written between 1011 to 1021, an Iraqi scientist, Ibn- al- Haytham, mentioned this kind of device. One of the significant disadvantages of earlier cameras was that they could not save the images. Besides, they were huge in size. After inventing the first practical photography in 1829, Louis Daguerre took almost ten years to develop the effective method called daguerreotype. In partnership with Niepce, he developed the process of obtaining a picture on a silver-coated copper sheet. Soon after the sale of its rights to the French government, several daguerreotype studios started working.
A long journey of incremental advancement led to color photography in 1940:
Like many other inventions, many people started improving the daguerreotype process. For example, in 1841, Henry Fox Talbot invented a method of getting several positives from a single negative. Among other contributions, Hamilton Smith received a patent for tintypes in 1856. Furthermore, wet plate negatives development by Frederick Scoff took place in 1851. Subsequently, in 1879, the invention of dry plate negatives happened. After a long gap, significant advancement of camera invention took place in 1940—color photography. Eventually, all these inventive activities culminated at the beginning of easy-to-operate photography with a handy camera. Passion for Perfection is at the core of this relentless journey.
Evolution of camera invention from the camera obscura—inverted image formation with the pinhole camera:
Before the emergence of electronic image sensor technology in digital cameras and camera phones, camera invention evolved through many generations of photographic technologies. Some of them are (i) daguerreotypes, (ii) calotypes, (iii) dry plates, and (iv) film.
Camera obscura is a natural phenomenon. It takes place due to the projection of a scene through a small hole. It forms an inverted image on a surface opposite to the opening. Han Chinese philosopher Mozi (c. 470 to c. 391 BC) justified image formation by camera obscure due to traveling of light in straight lines from its source. Other than manual tracing, there was no means of recording this image. By explaining the experimentation with light through a small opening in a darkened room, Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040 AD), an Arab physicist, wrote working and design principles of this camera. Hence, credit for the invention of the pinhole camera goes to him. The use of portable camera obscura devices in tents and boxes as drawing aid started in the late 17th century.
Experimentation of silver salt as image capturing technology:
Upon succeeding with image formation with a pinhole camera, the journey began to find substance for recording the image. The first target was silver salts. For centuries, people knew that silver salts darkened when exposed to sunlight. Through numerous experiments, in 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze, a German scientist, discovered that the salts’ darkening was due to light alone. There was no role of heat or exposure to air. After 50 years, in 1777, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele detected the optically darkening property of silver chloride. However, such observations did not lead to achieving the goal of developing a process to create fixed images created by the camera obscura.
Formation of the first permanent photograph of a pinhole camera image:
In 1825, using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce captured the first permanent photograph. The process is known as “heliography” needed an 8-hour exposure on pewter coated with bitumen to capture the image. Subsequently, Niépce partnered with the inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre to improve the heliographic process. Despite the death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre succeeded in developing a high-contrast and extremely sharp image. By 1837, he created the famous Daguerreotype process. He formed a high-contrast, sharp image by exposing it on a plate coated with silver iodide; he exposed this plate again to mercury vapor. The standard salt solution helped to fix the images.
There are also reports that in the 1830s, an English scientist, William Henry Fox Talbot, developed a process of capturing camera images using silver salts. He also developed calotypes– a two-step process for creating photographs on paper.
The invention of the Daguerreotype process led to the commercial manufacturing of the daguerreotype camera, built by Alphonse Giroux in 1839. This camera needed long exposure times, from 5 to 30 minutes, among many other limitations. The starting of this commercialization process triggered the race of incremental advancements, such as decreasing exposure time and making a faster lens.
The invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox is an essential milestone in camera invention. The camera could be hand-held while taking the picture became possible due to this invention.
Photographic film invention led to ultimate camera invention:
George Eastman played a crucial role in the invention and commercialization of photographic film. He started manufacturing paper film in 1885. Later on, he switched to celluloid in 1888–1889. His Kodak camera, introduced in 1888, came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures. When the roll was finished, users had to send back the camera to the factory for processing and reloading. Subsequently, within a decade, Eastman consolidated the commercialization of camera invention and continued incremental advancement. However, after an extended 100 years of creation and dominance of the photographic business, Kodak faced a disastrous reality. It happened due to the Reinvention of the camera by replacing film with an electronic image sensor. Subsequently, the camera as a standalone product has virtually disappeared due to the growing popularity of smartphone digital cameras. In retrospect, camera invention is a story of a series of creative destructions.
