When was photography invented?

The invention of photography has come a long way in its relatively short history. In almost 200 years, the camera developed from a plain box that took blurry photos to the high-tech mini computers found in today's DSLRs and smartphones.

Photography was invented in 1822 when the first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (pronounced “nyeps”). Unfortunately, the first examples of Niépce’s work have been lost to history, but he still holds the title for the oldest surviving photograph, taken in 1826.

His process used a camera obscura to capture images that were exposed onto bitumen-coated pewter plates.

Exposures often took hours due to the limited light-sensitivity of available materials.

In 1829, there were other inventor and artist which are; Louis Daguerre, partnered with Niépce to improve the photography process. After Niepce’s death, Daguerre continued his work, and the process evolved into what is now known as the daguerreotype, which was shown publicly for the first time in 1839.

That same year, Robert Cornelius took the first self-portrait, and portrait studios using daguerreotypes became popular soon after.

The following are the three that were instrumental in the development of modern photography.

• Daguerreotype: Niépce's experiment led to a collaboration with Louis Daguerre. The result was the creation of the daguerreotype, a forerunner of modern film.

A copper plate was coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor before it was exposed to light.

To create the image on the plate, the early daguerreotypes had to be exposed to light for up to 15 minutes.

The daguerreotype was very popular until it was replaced in the late 1850s by emulsion plates.

• Emulsion Plates: Emulsion plates, or wet plates, were less expensive than daguerreotypes and required only two or three seconds of exposure time. This made them much more suited to portrait photographs, which was the most common use of photography at the time. Many photographs from the Civil War were produced on wet plates.

These wet plates used an emulsion process called the Collodion process, rather than a simple coating on the image plate. It was during this time that bellows were added to cameras to help with focusing.

Two common types of emulsion plates were the ambrotype and the tintype.

• Ambrotypes used a glass plate instead of the copper plate of the daguerreotypes.
• Tintypes used a tin plate. While these plates were much more sensitive to light, they had to be developed quickly.

Photographers needed to have chemistry on hand and many traveled in wagons that doubled as a darkroom.

• Dry Plates: In the 1870s, photography took another huge leap forward. Richard Maddox improved on a previous invention to make dry gelatine plates that were nearly equal to wet plates in speed and quality.

These dry plates could be stored rather than made as needed. This allowed photographers much more freedom in taking photographs. The process also allowed for smaller cameras that could be hand-held. As exposure times decreased, the first camera with a mechanical shutter was developed.
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