Inventor Alhazen - Camera Case

Imagine a world without the ability to capture a moment with a picture, no way of saving a moment but through words and drawings. Before 1814, when the first photograph was actually taken, there was no such thing as a camera. The camera has given us the ability to capture memories, document history, and has given us the ability to view something actual without being present at the time. The invention of the camera enabled multiple opportunities for other inventors, altered the way we document history and memories, and destroyed many aspects of the art industry but also created a whole new art. With the invention of the camera the ideas and creativity are endless.

Inventor Alhazen invented the first camera obscura in 1000 A.D.The camera obscura captured the image, but the person using the camera had to manually sketch the image onto a sheet of paper, and was used for illustration purposes only. Inventors took this complex machine and began thinking of a simpler way to capture the image, and transfer that image onto a sheet of paper. In 1827, Joseph Nicephore Niepce took the camera obscura to a new level. He took heliographs, which are pictures where the sun drew the light onto the paper, this was the first recorded photograph, although, the picture took eight hours to form and faded after only half an hour. In 1835 Louis Daguerre, who had a partnership with Niepce, created Daguerreotype. Daguerreotype was the first photographic image that took only half an hour to completely form and did not fade. When the Daguerreotype became available to the public in 1839, many new inventions began to spring up. In 1841, Henry Fox Talbot created what is known as the calotype; the first paper-negative photograph. Then in 1851, Frederick Scoff Archer created the wet plate negative; a photograph on glass. Photography began advancing rapidly after sensitized materials could be coated on plate glass. However, the plates used in the wet plate negatives had to be developed quickly before the emulsion dried. The major moment in history, when mass production of boxed cameras became a reality, was in 1889, when inventor George Eastman created a film with a flexible and unbreakable base. This invention was emulsions coated on a cellulose nitrate film base. The technology improvements to the camera were and still are endless. To this day there are still improvements to photography and the machine behind the picture.

Photography has changed how we do many things in our everyday life. Text books, billboards, magazines, and so much more include photographs. Before 1814, you had to pay a professional to draw your family portrait and now we just click a button on our phones. Today, photography is a means of communication and a mode of visual expression. Taking pictures has became most popular for a way of crystallizing memories. Majority of the billions of pictures taken today are snapshots, which are casual records to document personal events such as birthdays,