The word "photography" comes from the Greek words for light and writing. Johann Von Maedler, a Berlin astronomer, first used the word in 1839.
The first camera was called the Camera Obscura, which means dark chamber. In a dark room, a small hole in the wall allowed an outside image to be projected into the room, upside down. Eventually, smaller sized cameras were developed and mirrors were added to display the image correctly.
Autochrome was the first process used to create color photographs. It was developed in 1903 by the Lumiere brothers and was in continuous use until the 1930's when it was replaced by color film.
| 1725-27 |
Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers and experiments with the darkening action of light on mixtures of chalk and silver nitrate. |
| 1777 |
Carl Wilhelm Scheele proves ammonia stabilizes darkened silver salts. |
| 1786 |
Gilles-Louis Chrétien develops the Physionotrace for profile portraits. |
| 1794 |
Robert Barker opens the first Panorama, prototype of future movie houses. |
| 1802 |
Thomas Wedgwood, following the experiments of Schulze and Scheele, produces silhouettes by use of silver nitrate but is unable to fix the images. |
| 1806 |
William Hyde Wollaston invents the camera lucida. |
| 1816 |
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's attempts at photography he called heliography (sundrawing) records a view from his workroom window on paper sensitized with silver chloride, but he is only partially able to fix the image. |
| 1816-26 |
Niépce achieves his first photographic image with a camera obscura. |
| 1819 |
Sir John Herschel discovers the photographic fixative, hyposulfite of soda. |
| 1822 |
Niépce succeeds in obtaining a photographic copy of an engraving superimposed on glass. |
| 1822 |
Niépce, using a camera, makes a view from his workroom window on a pewter plate. |
| 1827 |
Charles Wheatstone describes a moving shutter. |
| 1829 |
Niépce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre form a 10-year partnership to develop photography. |
| 1829 |
Wheatstone invents a non-photographic stereoscopic viewing device. |
| 1833 |
William Henry Fox Talbot begins experimenting with photogenic drawings. |
| 1835 |
Talbot photographs window at Lacock Abbey. |
| 1837 |
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre creates his first daguerreotype. |
| 1839 |
The daguerreotype is publicly announced at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. |
| 1839 |
Giroux Daguerreotype camera is introduced; first commercially-manufactured camera. |
| 1839 |
The Petzval lens is introduced. |
| 1841 |
William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype process. |
| 1843 |
Anna Atkins produced the first photographically illustrated album entitled: British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. |
| 1844 |
Talbot publishes Pencil of Nature. |
| 1845 |
Mathew Brady begins to photograph famous persons of his time, including Daniel Webster, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper. |
| 1847 |
Louis Désiré Blanquard-Evard improves Talbot's Calotype process and sets up a photographic printing establishment. |
| 1848 |
Claude Felix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor uses albumen on glass plates for negatives. |
| 1849 |
Maxime Du Camp travels to Egypt to photograph monuments. |
| 1849 |
Stereophotography, which uses a double lens camera to produce two views that together produce a three- dimensional view, is developed. |
| 1850 |
Albumen printing paper is introduced by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard. |
| 1851 |
Talbot makes first instantaneous photographs using electric spark illumination. |
|
Frederick Scott Archer publishes wet-collodion process. |
| 1852 |
Talbot patents photoglyphic engraving which produces printable steel plates. |
| 1854 |
George Eastman born July 12, 1854, in Marshall, NY. He grew up in the family home which was in Waterville, NY (outside of Utica, NY). The old Eastman homestead has since been moved to the Genesee Country Museum in Mumford, NY. |
| 1854 |
Ambrotype, a positive collodion image, is patented in US. |
| 1855 |
Ferrotype process (tintypes) is introduced to US. |
| 1855 |
Henry Peach Robinson's photograph Fading Away establishes him as a chronicler of the Victorian scene with multiple negative compositions of a life near its end. |
| 1859 |
Sutton panoramic camera is patented. |
| 1860's |
Julia Margaret Cameron is known for her lyrical portraits of Victorian men and women. |
| 1861 |
Francois Willeme opens a photosculpture studio in Paris. |
|
Chambre Automatique de Bertsch - first sub-miniature camera. |
| 1864 |
Julia Margaret Cameron begins to photograph soft and impressionistic portraits that challenge the accepted ideas of focus. |
|
Joseph Wilson Swan perfects the carbo process. |
