Welcome to You Ask Andy

Marilyn Summers, age 11, of St. Catherines, Ont., for her question:

Who invented the camera?

The early Greeks had a camera of sorts. It took no permanent pictures and we do not know the inventor. It was called the camera obscures – the dark chamber, which just about describes it. The camera obscures was a box or a small, dark room. The only light entered through a tiny hole in one wall. The light, of course, carried an image of the scenery. It threw an upside down picture of light and shadows on the opposite wall.

The camera obscures may have been a mere curiosity or it may have been used to study eclipses. At any rate it survived the Dark Ages. Hilhazen, an Arabian writer, described it in the 12th century. Some people claim that Baptista Porta made the first camera in 1553. But it was not the first, nor did it take permanent pictures.

Maybe Johann Heinrich Schulze took the first stop to the permanent picture without knowing it. In 1727 he described why silver nitrate darkened with age. He said this was caused by light. Modern photography is done with chemicals which are sensitive to light.

Around 1800 Sir Humphrey Davy and Thomas Ridgewood used Schulze's idea to make silhouettes on glass. But their pictures soon faded. Meantime Joseph Nicephona Niepco of France was trying to copy pictures on lithographic stone. He used bitumen, from coal, and oil of lavender. Later he used his recipe to coat a sheet of pewter and placed it in a camera obscures. It was a slow and cumbersome process and no prints could be made. But it was the first photograph ever taken. The year was 1826.

Louis Daguerre had been experimenting with silver salts to take photographs when he heard of Niopcels invention. In 1829 the two men formed a partnership. After ten years of hard work they developed the daguerreotype. The picture was made on copper, coated with iodide. The detail was fine, the picture permanent. But no copies could be made from it.

Photographic copies were made possible by Henry Fox Talbot. He used light, sensitive paper, made transparent with wax, for film. This was the first negative from which prints could be made. Sir John Herschel, the astronomer, suggested that Talbot fix his negative with hypo and this so­ called calotype method of photography was patented in 1841.

Several wet plate methods wore invented during the next few years. Chemicals on the plate, which was used as we use film, wars kept moist and the process of taking a picture was much quicker than it had been. Frederick Scott Archer, James A. Cutting and Hamilton L. Smith each invented methods of this rather messy type of photography.

In 1871 a Dr. R. L. Maddox used gelatin to make a dry plate capable of making prints. Then, in 1889, George Eastman came up with his roll of supple transparent film. This and his Kodak camera made it possible for anyone to snap a picture. Just before 1940 Kodachrome film was invented and the taking of colored pictures became an everyday event.

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