From First Photography to Digital Photography
Story / / July 04, 2021
Joseph Nicephore Niépce, French inventor who achieved the first permanent photograph in history (1826), achieved the fixation of the image with a pewter plate (alloy of zinc, tin and pewter, coated with Judean bitumen diluted in Petroleum).
Shortly after Niépce met the businessman and painter Jaques Mande Daguerre, with whom, in 1829, he made an agreement to continue the experiment, Niépce died in 1833 poor and unknown.
Around 1835 the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first negative on paper, this discovery was called "Calatopia", (from the Greek beauty) it consisted of sheets of paper treated with silver nitrate, potassium iodide and gallic acid, in this way creates a negative from which many copies can be made (primitive negative system modern).
In 1837 Daguerre achieved his first daguerreotype (an invention that was first called "memory mirror"), the daguerreotype consists of a polished copper plate covered with silver, placed in a box with iodine to form photosensitive silver iodide, then the plate is inserted into the dark chamber and left until light burns off the iodides of silver.
Thanks to all the discoveries made during the 19th century, in 1900 the "Kodak Brownie", the first commercial camera, went on sale around 1930. the General Electric company creates the Sashalite (flash), just a year later, Harold Edgerton creates the strobe light, in 1949, Polaroid creates the first instant camera, and it is not until 1977 that Steven Sasson creates the first digital camera, which will not be commercialized until 2003.