Photography Timeline

By joethomas_98

  • Start

    A device used by artists in the 17th and 18th centuries in aid in drawing, by the beginning of the 19th century the camera obscura was ready with little or no modification to accept a sheet of light sensitive material to become the photographic camera.

  • William Hyde Wollaston

    Patented in 1806 by William Hyde Wollaston, the camera lucida (actually a reinvention of a device clearly described 200 years earlier by Johannes Kepler in his Dioptrice (1611)) performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed on the surface on which the artist is drawing

  • Niepce brothers

    In France the Niepce brothers initiate experiments to create images using light-sensitive materials

  • First photograph

    Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) a French doctor, produces the world’s first photograph using pewter plates in a camera obscura. Exposure was around eight hours.

  • Negative image

    Back in England, Talbot develops a “photogenic drawing process”, by creating a negative image on paper using sodium chloride and silver nitrate.

  • Daguerre

    Daguerre’s new process is
    announced to the French Academy of Sciences, without revealing the details
    and Daguerre seeks to have the French government buy the rights to his discovery.

  • Talbot hurriedly

    After hearing about Daguerre’s experiments, Talbot hurriedly prepares and presents papers at the Royal Institution and the Royal Society. Unlike the Daguerre process the image is recorded as a “negative” and has to be printed via a similar process to produce the final “positive”. Many positive prints can be made from a single negative.

  • Richard Beard

    Richard Beard opens his public portrait studio for Daguerreotypes on the roof of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London.

  • First Advertisement

    First advertisement with a photograph made in Philadelphia

  • 2-3 secound exposure

    Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process - images required only two or three seconds of light exposure.

  • Panoramic camera patented

    Panoramic camera patented - the Sutton.

  • Oliver Wendell

    Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer.

  • negatives are added to protected works under copyright

    Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright.

  • Richard Leach Maddox

    Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.

  • Eastman Dry Plate

    Eastman Dry Plate Company founded.

  • George Eastman

    George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film.

  • Kodak roll-film camera

    Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera.

  • Hannibal Goodwin

    Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

  • First mass-marketed camera

    First mass-marketed camera—the Brownie.

  • 35mm

    First 35mm still camera developed.

  • flash bulb

    General Electric invents the modern flash bulb.

  • flash light meter

    First light meter with photoelectric cell introduced.

  • kodak

    Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome film.

  • kodak

    Eastman Kodak introduces Kodacolor negative film.

  • electric photography

    Chester Carlson receives patent for electric photography (xerography).

  • polaroid

    Edwin Land markets the Polaroid camera.

  • kodak

    Eastman Kodak introduces high speed Tri-X film.

  • underwater camera

    EG&G develops extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy.

  • polaroid

    Polaroid introduces instant color film.

  • moon

    Photograph of the Earth from the moon.

  • polaroid

    Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera.

  • George Eastman and Edwin Land

    George Eastman and Edwin Land inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

  • point and shoot

    Konica introduces first point-and-shoot, autofocus camera.

  • sony

    Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder.

  • canon

    Canon demonstrates first digital electronic still camera.

  • pixar

    Pixar introduces digital imaging processor.

  • Eastman Kodak

    Eastman Kodak announces Photo CD as a digital image storage medium.