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Photography has changed the way we hold onto our memories, giving us permanent, visual proof of certain moments. Nowadays, you can easily snap a picture with the press of a shutter on a smartphone. That said, photography was a more complex process in the past, and its history blended a fair amount of innovation and technological breakthroughs.
But when was photography invented?What did the first picture look like, and how did it evolve in the medium that we use today? The history of photography is fairly interesting and packed with numerous experiments, each discovery having its ups and downs. Whether you are a professional photographer or a newbie with a mild interest in this area, this could turn out to be an enlightening article (pun intended, but we'll get to that later).
Photography started as a process where light, chemical reactions, and optics led to the development of what we know as a camera. Today, it seems simple. That's all because, in the past, innovators put down all the groundwork so that we could snap the best pictures.
The first step we made into the world of photography started with something called the "camera obscura." This was a device made to look like a box but occasionally would take the size of an entire room. Early camera obscura boxes would allow for the light to enter through one small opening of the box and let it out through the other. The first mentions of this were made in the 4th to 5th Century BC in China.
Scientists and artists alike would try their hands with this, studying the composition and perspectives for taking a photo. However, these images couldn't be recorded anywhere, so it was more of a curiosity rather than an actual tool. Still, scientists used their findings to create the initial image-recording device, making it the first important step in the history of photography.
The first actual photographic experiments took place in the 18th century. At that point, a scientist named Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver salts had the handy quality of darkening when exposed to light. This hit a light bulb in other scientists of the time because light was the main thing that presented the image in the camera obscura.
This discovery was picked up and improved later by Carl Wilhelm Scheele and other scientists, who played around with silver chloride and silver nitrate. After a fair amount of research, they managed to create light-sensitive plates, which would serve as the canvases where a photograph could develop.
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After getting past the issues of not being able to transfer light to record, scientists experienced the first breakthrough in 1826. At that point, Nicéphore Niépce used a process that he invented around 1822, namely heliography (or in less fancy terms, "sun writing"). To create the first permanent picture, he used the bitumen of Judea to coat a light-sensitive plate and then expose it to sunlight.
The good news is that the invention was groundbreaking, and he succeeded in creating the first permanent picture. The bad news is that it took at least 8 hours of exposure for the picture to develop. It was impressive, indeed, but too cumbersome to become widespread.
Once news of the first picture that wasnota painting reached the world, scientists became motivated to improve the process. Plenty of them came up with their own process, the most notable being the following:
In 1839, as an attempt to reduce the exposure time that Niépce needed to create a picture, Louis Daguerre came up with the daguerreotype process. The earlier methods of photography rendering didn't have such a clear image, but Daguerre succeeded in fixing that.
Once the plate was polished until it had a mirror finish and was then sensitized with bromine and iodine vapors, it would create a stronger reaction to light. Early pictures using this process could be finalized in 15 minutes, which was much better than the 8 hours of the first photo.
Niépce was not the only one to refine photographic work. Around the same time, William Henry Fox Talbot would also create something called the calotype process. Rather than using different plates for every picture, Talbot relied on the positive-negative process.
Thanks to this breakthrough in science, he could use the same negative to create multiple copies of the same image. Daguerreotypes were one of a kind, so if you wanted to give a picture to every family member, you'd have to take a different one each time. The second method allowed for better replication and consequently laid the grounds for modern film photographs.
The development of photography already showed great potential, but the pictures were still blurry. To improve their quality, Frederick Scott Archer came up with the collodion wet plate process.
The procedure started with a metal or glass plate, wiping egg white on the edges and then coating it with collodion. The plate would then be dunked into silver nitrate to offer it light sensitivity and later added into a "dark slide" of the camera.
Photographers would take the picture and develop it in the next 15 minutes, the result being a black-and-white photo. It was easier and faster to take pictures than before, but photographers still had to carry their tents and chemistry sets wherever they went. Otherwise, they would end withdamaged photographs.
The 19th century turned a corner, and people agreed that photography needed one more thing: portability and time. On-the-spot development would render plenty of photographs useless if you didn't have time to work on them. Plus, unless you had a carriage of your own, carrying all that equipment on a train would be difficult. You'd need to have a strong backbone, and we mean that literally. Thus, advancements were necessary to ease the process.
In the early 1870s, wet plates were replaced with something more convenient: the gelatin dry plates. Richard Leach Maddox created a boom in the world of photography with them because he could store the photos and develop them later. It suddenly became more practical to be a travel photographer.
The process was further improved by George Eastman, who founded Eastman Dry Plate. Most of us know it by its brand name: Eastman Kodak Company. The moment Eastman introduced the flexible roll film in 1888, things took an even stronger leap toward the future. The masses could get access to photography tools, as they no longer had to carry a chemistry set with them. They just had to press the shutter, and the camera would do the rest.
Cameras were handy tools to capture memories, but one could not ignore the fact that they were bulky. Eastman was an innovator at heart, so of course he had an answer to that. He created point-to-shoot and smaller cameras that were user-friendly. Early cameras were still bulkier than what we are used to today but could fit in a bag and capture memories on the go.
The 20th century brought more developments than ever, with pictures looking more realistic with every passing year. Photography was used for both documentation and art as it became more accessible.
Being able to take a picture in black and white is considered cool today, but in the early 20th century, that was the only thing people had. It got boring after some point. Photographers wanted life in their pictures, and color photography made that happen. James Clerk Maxwell dabbled in the principles of color photography back in 1861, so we had the theory.
That said, it didn't take root until the Autochrome plates and Kodachrome film were introduced in 1907 and 1935 respectively. Once those appeared, people were able to capture the world in color, turning photography into an art form.
Over the next decade, cameras became more and more sophisticated, with the first Polaroid camera being invented in 1948. This allowed people to take pictures that developed within minutes.
With instant photography becoming common, candid photography gained more popularity. From that moment, people could capture moments in life without having to pose for them, offering a touch of authenticity. This practice was quite common in World War II, with photos appearing in numerous journal articles of the time.
Eventually, numerous old photos of that era made their way into the Science Museum Group Collection after having the damage—such as fading, tears, and stains—carefully removed by a photograph restoration expert.
Bring old memories back to life with our expert photo restoration service!
In the 19th century, photography was belittled as a mechanical art. In the 20th century, it started gaining more and more recognition as a modern art category. It became a common sight to see in a museum group collection, with Alfred Stieglitz being one of the first photographers to be accepted as "artists."
The reasoning behind that was easy to understand. To take a photograph, you'd have to push boundaries, experiment with subject matter, play with light, and handle composition. You could only do that if you possessed creativity, so photography's status as an art form could no longer be denied.
Taking pictures and uploading them online seems like a normal thing nowadays, but it wasn't always that easy. Still, as technology improved, so did our ability to digitize pictures.
Decades ago, people would take a picture and hope for the best once developed. Polaroids made things easier, but people still needed to frame and focus the subject correctly for the pictures to be qualitative. Things changed when Steven Samson developed the first digital camera in 1975, as the views were made directly on the device. If you didn't like the picture, you could just take another one. Later, they could be stored on a computer for easy access.
Digital cameras were convenient to take a quick picture, but they were still pretty bulky. The first phone equipped with a camera was the J-SH04 developed by Sharp Corporation in 2000. This made it possible to take pictures without having your photography kit with you. The evolution of smartphones led to even more efficient cameras, allowing you to take professional-looking pictures with a device that could fit in your pocket.
Digital technology keeps getting better and better as time goes by, improving photography using computational techniques and AI. Advanced zoom and image stabilization became possible, and hobbyists could even enjoy real-time editing. Once digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras hit the market, professional photographers could take pictures with better precision and quality. Advancements were also made to enhance old photos in a simple digital process.
Check out our article on before and after restoration results to see how technological advancements have made this level of refined editing possible.
1871 - The gelatin dry plate processing was first invented
1880 - Shutter speed control was first introduced, offering better exposure
1888 - Roll film was introduced, which led to the creation of portable cameras
1920 - A shift was made to film from glass negative, ultimately leading to digital storage
1930 - Street photography was introduced, bringing photos into daily life
1948 - The Polaroid camera was invented, allowing people to take instant photos
1976 - The first digital camera was introduced, bringing us to the modern era
Photography enjoys a long history, starting with camera obscura devices and ending with fancy digital cameras. Today, it is considered a form of art and a way to immortalize a moment, telling a story by using light. AI-driven tools further improve the quality of the images, with computational imaging opening different doors.
It's difficult to predict how AI will change in the future, but so far, the progress looks great. Who knows? Eventually, we might not just be able to take crisp pictures of the moon but see every rock there in detail.
From the beginning of the history of photography, we've learned that people won't skip corners when saving a memory. With each breakthrough, we've gotten closer to the perfect picture, but somehow, we’re still feeling that we’re not there yet. Who knows, maybe the next big invention will get us there…
