History of Camera

Nowadays, not much thought goes into pulling out your phone, snapping a picture, and putting in on Instagram. But it hasn't been forever that someone was able to capture their favorite moments in a photo. The early camera was not much more than a pinhole camera as early as 1558. It was called the Camera Obscura. The Camera Obscura was seen as a drawing tool for objects. An image of a subject on paper was "projected" and could be used to draw, trace or paint it. The Camera Obscura provided an image that was temporary, and could not be lastingly captured on to paper for later. Around 1822 French researcher Joseph Nicephore Niepce, created the first photograph by using paper that was coated with a chemical. The image however, did fade after a short amount of time. Another Frenchman partnered with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1829, to find a way to create a permanent image. Joseph Niépce died in 1833 but his partner continued with the work and succeeded in 1837 after many long years of experimentation. A slightly more advanced version of this called the Calotype process made multiple pictures possible using the negative and positive method. It was during the 1840's that the use of photographic images in advertisements first started. Early photographers went through a process where they had to coat the surface with wet chemicals each and every time. In 1888 George Eastman founded Kodak. Kodak developed the photo fil in 1889 and made it available to the masses in rolls. This led to many other advancements in photography, including Thomas Edison's motion picture camera in 1891. After this, advancements only accelerated. The first camera available to the masses came in 1913, in the form of a 35 mm still camera. Kodak launched color film in1941. In 1948, the polaroid was brough to market, allowing for the instant processing of an image. Asian companies like Sony and Konica made an entry to the market. Konica launched the auto-focus camera, and Sony began making prototypes of the camcorder in 1978. That started the digital era as we know it today. Lets look at the basic workings of a camera. The first main component is the lens. The lens is really just a curved piece of glass. It takes light beams that bounce of an object, and redirects them so they form a real image. As the light enters the lense at an angle, it bends. It will bend again when it exits the lense. Light passing will bend to the center of the lense. The way the light bends, means it will reverse the path of the light. Take a light bulb for example, it sends light rays in all directions. The rays all start at the same place - the bulb - and then diverge. The lens takes the rays and points them back to a single point, this is the point at which you see the real image. So next time, when you pull your phone out to capture that summer memory, give a little thought into the people that made all of this possible.