History of the Digital Camera
By Mary Bellis
Digital camera technology is directly related to and evolved from the same technology that recorded television images. In 1951, the first video tape recorder (VTR) captured live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses (digital) and saving the information onto magnetic tape.
Bing Crosby laboratories (the research team funded by Crosby and headed by engineer John Mullin) created the first early VTR and by 1956, VTR technology was perfected (the VR1000 invented by Charles P. Ginsburg and the Ampex Corporation) and in common use by the television industry. Both television/video cameras and digital cameras use a CCD (Charged Coupled
Device) to sense light color and intensity.
During the 1960s, NASA converted from using analog to digital signals with their space probes to map the surface of the moon
(sending digital images back to earth). Computer technology was also advancing at this time and NASA used computers to enhance the images that the space probes were sending. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm
Way back in
1975 -- when
Kodachrome color slides and
Kodak
Instamatics were all the rage --
Kodak researcher Steve
Sasson built the first digicam, cobbled together from spare parts and bleeding edge digital technology.
http://www.retrothing.com/2008/05/kodaks-first-di.html
The word photography derives from the Greek words 'photos' meaning light and 'graphein' - to write. The word was popularized by
Sir John Herschel in 1839. Modern photography began in the 1820s with the first permanent photographs.
Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries.
Long before the first photographs were made, Chinese philosopher
Mo Ti and Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Euclid described a pinhole camera in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E Ibn al-
Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) studied the camera obscura and pinhole camera, Albertus Magnus (1193/1206-1280) discovered silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516-1571) discovered silver chloride. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm
Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals
(photochemical effect) in 1694. The novel Giphantie (by the French
Tiphaigne de la Roche, 1729-1774) described what can be interpreted as photography.
For years images have been projected onto surfaces. According to the
Hockney–Falco thesis as argued by artist David Hockney , some artists used the camera obscura and camera lucida to trace scenes as early as the 16th century. However, this theory is heavily disputed by today's contemporary realist artists who are able to create high levels of realism without optical aids. These early cameras did not record an image, but only projected images from an opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a surface, turning the room into a large pinhole camera. The phrase camera obscura literally means dark chamber.
While this early prototype of today's modern camera may have had modest usage in its time, it was an important step in the evolution of the invention.
Charles Ginsburg led the research team at Ampex
Corporation in developing the first practical videotape recorder (VTR). In 1951, the first video tape recorder
(VTR) captured live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses and saving the information onto magnetic tape. Ampex sold the first VTR for $50,000 in
1956.The first VCassetteR or VCR were sold by Sony in 1971.
http://misteridigital.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/the-history-ofvideo-tape-and-camera/
On January 7, 1839 Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the daguerreotype .[8] The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain. In 1832,
French-Brazilian painter and inventor Hercules Florence had already created a very similar process, naming it
Photographie .
By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process. He coated paper sheets with silver chloride to create an intermediate negative image. Later George Eastman refined Talbot's process, which is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. Hippolyte Bayard had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.
May 29, 2007 –
What would the world’s oldest camera be worth? The answer: over three-quarters of a million dollars. An
1839 daguerreotype camera was sold for a reported $792,333 at a photography auction house in Austria this weekend, according to the AP.
An anonymous online bidder beat out other interested parties from around the globe. The camera, made by the
French company Susse Frères, is a singular sliding box camera that professor Wolfgang Haase discovered in an attic in Germany.
Experts date the camera back to 1839, making it not only the oldest commercially manufactured camera but now the most expensive camera in the world, according to a statement by the WestLicht auction house
A camera obscura box used for drawing images.
By 1840, Talbot had invented the collotype process. He coated paper sheets with silver chloride to create an intermediate negative image.

A darkroom is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive photographic materials, including photographic film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been created and used since the inception of photography in the early 1800s. Darkrooms have many various manifestations, from the elaborate space used by
Ansel Adams to a retooled ambulance wagon used by Timothy O'Sullivan.
From the initial development to the creation of prints, the darkroom process allows
A dark room in a high school, which is part of the complete control over the medium.
school's photography classroom.
Due to the popularity of color photography and complexity of processing colour film ( see C-41 process ) and printing color photographs and also to the rise, first of Polaroid technology and later digital photography, darkrooms are decreasing in popularity, though are still commonplace on college campuses and in the studios of many professional photographers.
Collodion
Collodion is a solution of nitrocellulose in acetone or ether that was used as an alternative to albumen to coat glass photographic plates. Commonly used in the production of ambrotypes and tintypes in the 19th century.
A portable darkroom in
19th century Ireland . The wet collodion photography process, used at the time,
Albumen Print
Prints made on paper coated with a solution of albumen (egg whites) required that the image be developed while the plate was still wet, thus giving rise to portable darkrooms and ammonia salt, which is then sensitized such as this one. with silver nitrate and printed. Usually toned with chloride of gold. Popular 1850-1890. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Room http://www.photoeye.com/Gallery/Definitions.cfm
Tintype
A process was developed in the mid 19th century for producing photographs on thin sheets of iron. These images are commonly called tintypes, although they are more accurately called ferrotypes. The iron sheet was japanned or blackened, and then coated with liquid collodion and sensitized. After exposure, the plate was developed, fixed, and rinsed. After drying, the plate was varnished to protect the image. The resulting image was positive appearing.
Ambrotype
The ambrotype process was introduced in the mid 19th century and resulted in the creation of a positive image on a sheet of glass. The glass plate was coated with collodion and dipped in a solution of silver nitrate. The plate was then placed in the camera and exposed. After the plate was developed and fixed, the back of the plate was blackened resulting in a positive appearing image.
Like the daguerreotype, ambrotypes were usually placed in protective cases.
Albumen Print
Albumen prints were made by taking a thin piece of paper and floating it in a bath of egg white and salt, and then coating it with silver nitrate. This light-sensitive paper could then be placed in contact with a glass plate negative and exposed to light to make a positive print. These thin paper prints then were typically trimmed and glued to a card mount for support.
Platinum/Palladium Print
Platinum: An iron (non-silver) process for making photographic prints in which platinum is reduced from a salt to form the image.
Introduced commercially in 1879 as Platinotype, it is a permanent process.
Palladium: An iron (non-silver) process for making photographic prints in which palladium is reduced from a salt to form the image.
Introduced around 1916 when platinum became very expensive because of WWI. It is a permanent process still practiced widely today.
Polaroid
Also called "diffusion transfer photographs." These photographs are made from film packets that contain their own developing chemicals. They may be color or black-and-white, and while they are usually prints, they may also be negatives or transparencies.
Polaroid introduced the process in 1947.
This is the oldest known photograph in the world. It is a photograph of a 17th century Flemish engraving, showing a man leading a horse. It was made by the French inventor
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1825, with an heliography technical process. The Bibliotheque nationale de France bought it 450,000 € in 2002, deeming it as a "national treasure".
His photographs were produced on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of
Judea. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light. The unhardened material may then be washed away and the metal plate polished, rendering a negative image which then may be coated with ink and impressed upon paper, producing a print. Niépce then began experimenting with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.
Heliography: The process used bitumen, as a coating on glass or metal, which hardened in relation to exposure to the hardened image area remained.