A bit of history

Photography: Black and White

In the Beginning:

Long before the advent of photography, the three things needed to create a photograph were known about. The camera obscura (a dark room with a small hole in one wall to display the scene outside), chemical reaction of light on silver (known about by the Greeks) and lenses. Alas no one had ever thought of combining these three separate items until the late 18^th early 19^th centuries. I won't go in to the chronology of the different discoveries. The first to come up with a photographic process were two Englishmen by the names of Thomas Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy(later Sir). They were followed by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre and William Fox-Talbot. It was William Fox-Talbot's discovery of the negative that led to the birth of modern photography. The main problem with this early photography was the fact that you had to take your darkroom with you.

The cameras were large and heavy and took 10” x 8” glass plates. Exposures were long, from minutes to hours, and had to be developed immediately. In the mid 1800's came an invention that changed all that. The dry plate. These could be exposed and then stored in the dark until you got back to your darkroom to develop them. In 1888 came the biggest game changer of them all. George Eastman invented roll film, bringing photography to the masses. With the roll film came smaller and lighter cameras. When you bought a Kodak camera it came ready loaded with 100 shots. Once exposed you sent the whole thing back to Kodak and waited for your prints to arrive. With these cameras came the explosion of photography as we know it today. Various film formats came and went and finally along came digital. Invented by Kodak.