THE EARLY DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Today, it is a simple matter to snap a digital picture to decorate birthday invitations printed on a laser printer; taking pictures wasn’t always such an easy process. Numerous men contributed to the development of photography, principally throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, though the idea that light can reflect images dates back hundreds of years.
The camera obscura was one of the first methods to accomplish this. It is a box with a hole that lets in light and casts an image on the side of the box opposite the hole. These were not permanent images, and the boxes quite large at first, but they set the stage for the development of the camera.
Such devices are mentioned in Chinese documents dating to 5th century BC, and by Aristotle who lived in 4th century Greece. Johannes Kepler, a 17th century astronomer, gave the device its name.
One of the first developments that lead to the use of chemicals in photography took place in 1727. Johann Heinrich Schulze (1684-1744) observed that chemicals in a glass jar facing a window changed color on one side. He conducted experiments to determine whether it was the light or heat from the sun that caused the chemicals to darken, discovering it was the light.
Later, Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) discovered he was able to copy an image onto glass using silver nitrate in 1802, but was unable to permanently fix the image. The image didn’t hold up to exposure to bright light, only candlelight. He died three years later at the age of 34 before learning more.
Beginning in 1816, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce experimented with combining the concept of the camera obscura with chemically-treated paper to produce a permanent image.
The first major step toward modern photography took place in 1827 when Niépce produced the first successful photograph.
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) created a paper negative in 1834. He used a camera obscura fitted with a lens and paper treated in silver chloride to photograph a building at his residence in Wiltshire, England. He discovered that the parts of the building brightly lit by sun were cast onto the paper; the areas in shade were not. He had smaller boxes built, and found the smaller the box, the faster the image developed.
Niepce partnered with Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) who already used a camera obscura for perspective when painting and wanted to find a way to fix an image. After Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued experimenting. In 1835, he accidentally discovered that mercury vapors “developed” an image. By 1837, he had learned to fix images, which became known as daguerreotypes. A French Commission chaired by Paul Delaroche (1797-1859) bought the rights and publically announced them in 1839.
In 1839, Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) fixed images using hyposulfite of soda. He also coined the terms photography, negative, and snapshot.
During the 1840’s, the albumen process developed. The paper for the negative was treated with a mixture of potassium iodide and egg whites to increase the definition in negatives. It eliminated the transfer of the imperfections in the paper from which the negative was made to the paper on which the positive image was cast.
Talbot, who had previously developed the paper negative, created calotype in 1840. He used paper brushed with a salt solution then silver nitrate and dried to make it sensitive to light. The addition of gallic acid enabled the latent image to develop directly on the paper.
Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) developed the wet collodion process in 1848 after failed experiments with the albumen process. The collodion process combined the best of daguerreotype (sharpness of image) with the best of calotype (the ability to reproduce the picture). It used a glass base for a negative, treated with potassium iodide, and the negative was immersed in silver nitrate. This radically reduced exposure time.
Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) favored calotype over daguerreotype because of the ability to reproduce the image. He invented the stereoscopic viewer in 1849. Stereoscopic photography is three-dimensional. Each eye sees an image slightly differently, so viewing an image through a binocular device restores depth to the picture. Some attribute this invention to Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838.
Andre Disderi (1819-1889) patented the carte de visite in 1854, a device which allowed albumen prints to be mounted on small cards. They became more popular than daguerreotype because the prints were small enough to be mailed.
In 1871, Dr. Richard Maddox (1816-1902) was the first to suggest the process of coating plates with gelatin, to make a dry plate process. The collodion process was a wet process, requiring photographs to be developed immediately. With dry-plate processing, photographs could be developed at a later time.
Herman Vogel (1834-1898) developed the precursor to color film in 1873 in a process called “optical sensitizing” which was sensitive to green light, not just blue.
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) developed the zoopraxiscope during experiments to photograph animals in motion. Cine photography (moving pictures) developed from this idea many years later.
George Eastman (1854-1932) was a proponent of Brewster’s dry-plate process and went on to develop film, cameras, and the developing machines that moved photography into the modern era.
The ease with which we can incorporate a color picture in a brochure or add an image to a car magnet to advertise a business is due to the vision of these brilliant men.