The fun filled timeline of photography.

Photography like every other field has evolved over centuries. Here is a brief timeline of photography major events interspersed with some fun facts . Bear with me, its long but will surely take you on an incredible journey. 🙂

Mo Zi (468-376 BCE) – Ballpark around 2400 years ago in China

Mo Zi or Mo Di was a Chinese philosopher born in Shandong province and was the founder of the school of Mohism. So the question is, what does he have to do with modern day photography? If history has been recorded correctly, he is the first person to have recorded the functioning of what we know as Camera Obscura. He also stated the concept behind the straight line propagation of light and reflection of light by convex, concave and planar mirrors.

That is how the great philosopher looked like.

Around the same period (5th to 4th century BC) the Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid mentioned the effects of a pinhole camera.

There are other notable references in between but let’s fast forward to a time little closer to us.

Somewhere between 1664-1667 – Sir Issac Newton

And you thought he spoke only about Gravity?

He was also responsible for refracting white light off a prism and letting us know it is composed of different colors.

1727 – Johann Heinrich Schulze

He sure has played a role in processing part of photographs. He discovered that silver nitrate turned dark when exposed to light. We should be thankful that he set the foundation for today’s permanent photography prints by experimenting with Silver nitrate to capture shadows.

1790 – Thomas Wedgewood

Carrying on where Schulze left he placed objects on leather sensitized with silver nitrate/silver salts to capture “images”. It was a pity though that the images didn’t last long.

1816 – 1827 – Nicephore Niepce

He sure was patient and dedicated to what he was doing. He experimented and made photographs using coatings of bitumen on metal and glass and was responsible for capturing the first permanent photograph – View from the window at Le Gras. The exposure time? A stupendous eight hours. And all of us feel happy with a couple of minutes long exposure :D.

1837 – Louis Daguerre

Along with Neipce, Daguerre was trying to reduce the eight hour exposure time on the first permanent photograph. He came up with a process using silver iodide coated copper plate which was exposed and later treated with mercury to develop a single positive. He named it after himself and called it the Daguerreotype. The exposure time was brought down from eight hours to 30 minutes, quite a remarkable feat we must say. He was responsible for capturing the first photograph of a human when attempting to capture the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Now, the funny part is that the exposure time of the image was seven minutes, every moving object in the image was blurred apart from a gentleman getting his shoes polished. Crazy aint it? It is said that there are other people visible in the image but I did not have the patience to look for them. Do you have it?

1839 – The first selfie (self portrait)

Robert Cornelius is credited to have taken the first self portrait on Chestnut street behind his business in Philadelphia. He was patient enough to sit in front of the camera for a minute before covering the lens. Imagine all you selfie addicts have to do that on today’s date 🙂

1840 – William Henry Talbot

Talbot was responsible for coming up with the first “negative” from which multiple positives could be developed. He called his process the calotype.

Also in 1840 the first patent in photography was awarded to Alexander Wolcott for his camera

1843 – Woohoo! the first print advertisement with a photograph was made in Philadelphia.

1845 – The first photograph of the sun

Believe it or not the first photograph of the sun was shot on 2nd April 1845. A Daguerreotype exposure of 1/60th seconds resulted in an image which even showed a few sunspots.

1851 – Frederick Scott Archer

Thanks to him we moved light years ahead in terms of exposure. He invented the collodion process which brought down the exposure time for images to 2 to 3 seconds. Amazing, right?

1859 – Sutton Panoramic camera

Believe it or not by 1859 Thomas Sutton had built a panoramic camera which used a water filled lens to capture an image on a curved plate.

1860 – An aerial shot without a drone?

Drone or no drone in 1860 James Wallace Black climbed into a hot air balloon and captured the town of boston from 2000 ft in the sky and aptly named it “Boston, as the Eagle and the wild Goose see it.”

1861 – First SLR

Remember Thomas Sutton from the 1860? The guy who developed the panoramic camera? The best part is he didnt stop here, he went ahead and in 1861 developed the first SLR or single lens reflex camera whose child the DSLR is what we use right now.

1861 – First color Photograph

1861 looked like a good year for photography. This was the year when the first color photograph was taken based on the principles developed by a physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Rightfully the shutter was released by none other than the founder of SLR, Thomas Sutton. And guess what the object was – A three colored bow!

1865 – Copyright law

Yes, it was that far back that photographs and negatives were added as protected work under laws of copyright. Weird right? Still there are people stealing photos across the web as if its nothing 🙂

1880 – A new era begins – Eastman Dry Plate company was founded

The name rings a familiar bell doesn’t it? This was the company which later changed the game of photography. Clue – Not to be confused with a bear.

1884 – First paper based film

George Eastman of the Eastman Dry Plate company develops paper based photographic film.

1888 – First roll film camera

Eastman was on a roll, literally! In 1888 the patented the Kodak roll film camera

1900 – First commercially sold camera

Kodak set the market on fire with an inexpensive cardboard box camera called the Brownie available at just $1 which used to shoot 2 ¼ inch square black and white pictures.

1913 – First 35 mm SLR hits the market.

The American Tourist Multiple with its leather covered body and a vertical design was one of the first 35 mm SLR’s. It sold at a whopping $175 in 1913 which was a small fortune for average people.

1927 – POP goes the flash!

General electric came up with the modern flash bulb.

1935

 Eastman Kodak came up with Kodachrome film.

1941

 Eastman Kodak’s contribution to the photography field continues with the introduction of Kodacolor negative film.

1948

Big moment which was a game changer the way timeline moved, Edwin Land built and marketed the Polaroid camera.

1954

Eastman Kodak continued its surge in the film market by introducing high-speed Tri-X film.

1963

Polaroid introduces the instant color film. See what I said about Polariod in 1948?

1968

The Earth is photographed from the Moon!. The photograph taken by astronaut William Anders on December 24th aptly called Earthrise, is considered one of the most influential photographs ever taken. Though the first view of Earth from the moon was shot on Aug 23rd 1966 from Lunar orbiter.

1973 – Instant photography

What better than being able to see what you have photographed immediately? Polaroid (yet again) introduces instant photography with the SX-70 camera.

1975 – Kodak does it again with a digital still camera this time.

Invented by Steven Sason the camera was a monster weighing at around 3.6 kg and recording an image size of 0.01 MP. It was built from parts of super 8 movie cameras and a CCD sensor the image was transferred to the cameras temporary memory in about 50 ms. From there to transfer to the cassette tape which recorded 30 images it took about 23 seconds. Could anyone at that time have imagined the megapixel war today?

1977 – This is what a lot of us do even now 🙂

Konica brought to the market the first Autofocus camera point and shoot camera. The C35 AF nicknamed the Jasupin used the Vistronic AF system developed by honeywell.

1986

Did you know that the first megapixel sensor was developed by Kodak in 1986 which was then integrated with a Canon F1 film SLR body to create an early DSLR? But the bragging rights for the first commercial DSLR camera goes to Nikon with its QV-1000C

1999 – First cellphone with a camera.

Kyocera corporation manufactured and introduced VP210 the visual phone which was the first ever mobile with an inbuilt camera. Rest is History 😀

2011 – Shoot now focus later

Lytro introduced a camera working on the lightfield technology where you can point your camera anywhere you want and the later readjust the focus in a software. It can surely come in handy during some must have shot situations.

I haven’t covered every checkpoint in the History, have tried to keep it interesting. Hopefully you made it till the end 🙂

So which was the part that made your jaw drop?:)

P.s – The photographs in this article have been pulled off the web, I do not own copyright to any of these. If you claim the copyright to any and want me to take it down do let me know. I can add credit as well if you can provide me with the info. 🙂