History of photography
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Add full title to caption of lead image Niépce
[[Image:View from the Window at Le Gras, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[[Nicéphore Niépce]]'s earliest surviving photograph of a scene, circa 1826,
"''View from the Window at Le Gras''," [[Saint-Loup-de-Varennes]] (France).]]
Modern '''photography''' began in the [[1820s]] with the first permanent [[photograph]]s.
==Conception of permanent images==
[[Image:Camera obscura box.jpg|thumb|200px|A camera obscura box used for drawing images]]
[[Photography]] is the result of combining several technical discoveries. Long before the first photographs were made, [[Ibn al-Haytham]] (Alhazen) (965–1040) invented the [[camera obscura]] and [[pinhole camera]],<ref>Nicholas J. Wade, Stanley Finger (2001), "The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective", ''Perception'' '''30''' (10), p. 1157–1177.</ref> [[Albertus Magnus]] (1139-1238) discovered [[silver nitrate]], and Georges Fabricius (1516-1571) discovered [[silver chloride]]. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie (by the French [[Tiphaigne de la Roche]], 1729-1774) described what can be interpreted as photography.
For centuries, images have been projected onto surfaces. According to the [[Hockney-Falco thesis]] as argued by artist [[David Hockney]],<ref>Charles Falco, [http://www.optics.arizona.edu/ssd/FAQ.html FAQ] (accessed March 16, 2007)</ref> some artists used the camera obscura and [[camera lucida]] to trace scenes as early as the [[16th century]]. However, this theory is heavily disputed by today's contemporary realist artists who are able to create high levels of realism without optical aids.<ref>David K. Yoder, [http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2004/Hockney/yoder1.asp Why David Hockney Should Not Be Taken Seriously] (accessed March 16, 2007)</ref> These early cameras did not fix an image, but only projected images from an opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a surface, turning the room into a large [[pinhole camera]]. The phrase ''camera obscura'' literally means dark chamber. While this early prototype of today's modern camera may have had modest usage in its time, it was an important step in the evolution of the invention.
==Development of chemical photography==
===Monochrome process===
[[Image:Nicéphore Niépce Oldest Photograph 1825.jpg|thumb|200px|left|First known photograph, taken by [[Nicéphore Niépce]] in 1825 by the [[heliograph]] process. The image is of a 17th Century Flemish engraving showing a man leading a horse.]]
[[Image:Boulevard du Temple.jpg|thumb|200px|left|"[[Boulevard du Temple]]", taken by [[Louis Daguerre]] in late 1838 or early 1839, was the first-ever photograph of a person. It is an image of a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the city traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is a man in the bottom left corner, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show up in the picture.]]
[[Image:RobertCornelius.jpg|thumb|Robert Cornelius|200px|right|[[Robert Cornelius]], self-portrait, Oct. or Nov. 1839, approximate quarter plate daguerreotype. The back reads, "The first light picture ever taken." This [[self-portrait]] is the first portrait image of a human ever produced.]]
The first permanent [[photograph]] was an image produced in 1825 by the [[France|French]] inventor [[Nicéphore Niépce]] on a polished [[pewter]] plate covered with a [[petroleum]] derivative called [[bitumen of Judea]]. Produced with a camera, the image required an eight-hour [[exposure (photography)|exposure]] in bright sunshine. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light. The unhardened material may then be washed away and the metal plate polished, rendering a negative image which then may be coated with ink and impressed upon paper, producing a print. Niépce then began experimenting with [[silver]] compounds based on a [[Johann Heinrich Schultz]] discovery in 1724 that a silver and [[chalk]] mixture darkens when exposed to light.
In partnership, Niépce (in [[Chalon-sur-Saône]]) and [[Louis Daguerre]] (in [[Paris]]) refined the existing silver process.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm | title=Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography | work=Timeline of Art History | publisher=[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] | date=October 2004 accessdate=2008-05-06}}</ref> In 1833 Niépce died of a stroke, leaving his notes to Daguerre. While he had no scientific background, Daguerre made two pivotal contributions to the process. He discovered that exposing the silver first to [[iodine]] vapour before exposure to light, and then to [[mercury (element)|mercury]] fumes after the photograph was taken, could form a [[latent image]]. Bathing the plate in a salt<!-- What kind of salt? --> bath then [[photographic fixer|fixes]] the image. On [[January 7]] [[1839]] Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the '''[[daguerreotype]]'''.<ref name="crawford">{{cite book|last=Crawford|first=William|title=The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes|year=1979|publisher=Morgan & Morgan|location=[[Dobbs Ferry, New York]]|isbn=0871001586|pages=20}}</ref> A similar process is still used today for [[Instant camera|Polaroid photo]]s. The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain.
In 1832, French-[[Brazil]]ian painter and inventor [[Hercules Florence]] had already created a very similar process, naming it ''Photographie''.
After reading about Daguerre's invention, [[William Fox Talbot|Fox Talbot]] worked on perfecting his own process; in 1839 he got a key improvement, an effective fixer, from [[John Herschel]], the astronomer, who had previously showed that hyposulfite of soda (also known as hypo, or now sodium thiosulfate) would dissolve silver salts. Later that year, Hershel made the first glass negative.
By 1840, Talbot had invented the [[calotype]] process. He coated paper sheets with [[silver chloride]] to create an intermediate [[negative (photography)|negative]] image. Unlike a daguerreotype, a calotype negative could be used to reproduce positive prints, like most chemical films do today. Talbot patented<ref>[http://www.google.com/patents?id=pIpDAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&#PPP1,M1 Improvement in photographic pictures], Henry Fox Talbot, United States Patent Office, patent no. 5171, June 26 1847.</ref> this process, which greatly limited its adoption. He spent the rest of his life in lawsuits defending the patent until he gave up on photography. Later [[George Eastman]] refined Talbot's process, which is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. [[Hippolyte Bayard]] had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.
In 1851 [[Frederick Scott Archer]] invented the [[collodion process]].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Photographer and children's author [[Lewis Carroll]] used this process.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}
Slovene [[Janez Puhar]] invented the technical procedure<!-- What procedure? --> for making photographs on glass in 1841.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} The invention was recognized on [[July 17]] [[1852]] in Paris by the Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale.
[[Herbert Bowyer Berkeley]] experimented with his own version of collodian emulsions after [[Samman]] introduced the idea of adding [[dithionite]] to the [[pyrogallol]] developer.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Berkeley discovered that with his own addition of [[sulfite]], to absorb the [[sulfur dioxide]] given off by the chemical dithionite in the [[photographic developer|developer]], that dithionite was not required in the developing process. In 1881 he published his discovery. Berkeley's formula contained pyrogallol, sulfite and citric acid. Ammonia was added just before use to make the formula [[alkaline]]. The new formula was sold by the [[Platinotype Company]] in London as Sulpho-Pyrogallol Developer.<ref name="levenson">{{cite journal |last=Levenson|first=G. I. P|year=1993|month=May|title=Berkeley, overlooked man of photo science|journal= Photographic Journal|volume=133|issue=4|pages=169–71}}</ref>
Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary. The German-born, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
====Popularization====
[[Image:Photographer-studio-1893.jpg|thumb|left|200px|A photographer appears to be photographing himself in a 19th-century photographic studio. (c. 1893)]]
The daguerreotype proved popular in responding to the demand for [[portrait photography|portraiture]] emerging from the middle classes during the [[Industrial Revolution]].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} This demand, that could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography. By 1851 a broadside by daguerreotypist [[Augustus Washington]] was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $10.<ref name="Loke, Margarett (2000), The New York Times, 7 July, Arts">{{cite web|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE5DD1F39F934A35754C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink |title= PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW; In a John Brown Portrait, The Essence of a Militant|accessdate=2007-03-16}}</ref> However, daguerreotypes were fragile and difficult to copy. Photographers encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot's process.
Ultimately, the modern [[Photographic processes|photographic process]] came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years. In 1884 [[George Eastman]], of [[Rochester, New York]], developed dry gel on paper, or [[Photographic film|film]], to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July of 1888 Eastman's [[Kodak]] camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the [[Brownie (camera)|Kodak Brownie]].
In the twentieth century, photography developed rapidly as a commercial service. End-user supplies of photographic equipment accounted for only about 20 percent of industry revenue. For the modern enthusiast photographer processing black and white film, little has changed since the introduction of the [[35mm film]] [[Leica]] camera in 1925.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}
===Color process===
[[Image:Tartan Ribbon.jpg|thumb|200px|right|First color image, photograph by [[James Clerk Maxwell|James Maxwell]], 1861.]]
Although [[color photography]] was explored throughout the [[19th century]], initial experiments in color could not fix the photograph and prevent the color from fading. Moreover until the 1870s the emulsions available were not sensitive to red or green light.
The first permanent color photo, an additive projected image of a tartan ribbon, was taken in 1861 by the [[Scotland|Scottish]] physicist [[James Clerk Maxwell]].<ref>{{cite book | title = The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell | page = 449 | author = James Clerk Maxwell | publisher = Courier Dover Publications | isbn = 0486495604 | year = 2003}}</ref> Several patentable methods for producing images (by either additive or subtractive methods, see below) were devised from 1862 on by two French inventors (working independently), [[Louis Ducos du Hauron]] and [[Charles Cros]].<ref name="coe">{{cite book|last=Brian|first=Coe|title=The Birth of Photography|year=1976|publisher=Ash & Grant|isbn=0904069079}}</ref> Practical methods to sensitize silver [[halide]] film to green and then orange light were discovered in 1873 and 1884 by [[Hermann W. Vogel]] (full sensitivity to red light was not achieved until the early years of the 20th century).
The first fully practical color plate, [[Autochrome]], did not reach the market until 1907. It was based on a screen-plate method, the screen (of filters) being made using dyed dots of potato starch. The screen lets filtered red, green or blue light through each grain to a photographic emulsion in contact with it. The plate is then developed to a negative, and reversed to a positive, which when viewed through the screen restores colors approximating the original.
Other systems of color photography included that used by [[Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii]], which involved three separate monochrome exposures ('separation negatives') of a still scene through red, green, and blue filters. These required a special machine to display, but the results are impressive even by modern standards. His collection of glass plates was purchased from his heirs by the [[Library of Congress]] in 1948, and is now available in digital format.
==Development of digital photography==
{{main|Digital photography}}
[[Image:Canon powershot a95.jpg|thumb|right|A [[Canon PowerShot A95]]]]
The [[charge-coupled device]] (CCD) was invented in 1969 by [[Willard Boyle]] and [[George E. Smith]] at AT&T [[Bell Labs]]. The lab was working on the Picture-phone and on the development of [[semiconductor]] bubble memory. Merging these two initiatives, Boyle and Smith conceived of the design of what they termed 'Charge "Bubble" Devices'. The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor.
* [[1973]] - [[Fairchild Semiconductor]] releases the first large image forming CCD [[chip]]; 100 rows and 100 columns.
* [[1975]] - Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the [[Bayer filter]] mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors
* [[1986]] - Kodak scientists develop the world's first [[Pixel#Megapixel|megapixel]] sensor
==References==
{{reflist}}
==See also==
*[[Timeline of photography technology]]
*[[History of the camera]]
*[[List of basic photography topics]]
==External links==
*[http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/ A history of photography from its beginnings till the 1920s], by Dr. Robert Leggat
*[http://www.tropinature.com/photohist/ History of photography], by J. Monge-Najera, [[University of Costa Rica]]
*[http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/ The First Photograph] at [[The University of Texas at Austin]]
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