Going Digital: A Brief, Recent Flash in the History of Photography
Almost 300 years of imaging science led to the current state of digital tech?suggesting that as impressive as that tech is, we ain't seen nothing yet.
CAMERAS
1839
In stores: the Giroux Daguerreotype, the world’s first consumer camera.
1859
Wide-field: Sutton patents a panoramic camera.
1888
Kodak introduces its first consumer camera; $25 buys you 100 exposures.
1900
Kodak’s Brownie brings photography to the people. A British poster advertises the camera for 5 shillings; cost in the U.S. is $1.
1912
The 35mm still camera is developed; the format soon dominates.
1959
The Nikon F sets the modern 35mm SLR standard.
1960
Holography, first proposed in the late 1940s, becomes possible with the invention of the pulsed ruby laser.
1963
The Kodak Instamatic goes on sale. Its new format challenges 35mm.
1972
Instant gratification: Polaroid introduces the 1-step SX-70 (left).
1976
Digital brain: canon’s AE-1 is the first camera with a microprocessor.
1977
Easy snap: Konica
introduces the first point-and-shoot autofocus camera.
1982
Kodak’s Disc Camera offers another alternative to 35mm film; the format flops.
1990
Start the digital revolution: Dycam’s 0.09MP Model 1 is the world’s first consumer digital cam.
1994
Kodak creates A 6MP digital camera for professionals; Consumer 6MP cameras are still 8 years off.
1995
Casio QV-10’s in-camera display lets you see your pictures instantly.
1996
Canon’s Elph (right) is the first Advanced Photo System camera, with unpleasantly grainy results.
2003
Fujifilm announces a 20MP image sensor for pros.
PHOTOGRAPHS
1826
Joseph Nicephore Niepce takes the first photograph, out his window, an
8-hour
exposure.
1877
Eadweard Muybridge’s cameras stop time: His multiple-camera shots detail a horse’s motion.
1931
Harold Edgerton develops strobe photography.
1939
Researchers first see a virus when an electron
microscope magnifies the tobacco mosaic strain.
1960
First spy in the sky:
The corona satellite system snaps photos high above the USSR (above).
1968
Small blue ball:
Apollo 8 astronauts take the first image of Earth from the Moon.
1993
After an in-orbit repair, the Hubble Space
Telescope takes its first clear picture (right).
2002
The fastest “picture”: a simulation of electrons moving within an atom, captured in 200 attoseconds.
TECHNOLOGY
1727
Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that a
mixture of chalk and silver nitrate darkens when exposed to light, paving the way for film.
1871
In the first commercial photographic process (above), light splits apart transparent silver bromide molecules (1), forming unbound metallic silver atoms (2)
and releasing bromide ions as a by-product. A chemical bath of developer makes the opaque silver particles grow (3); those particles form the dark regions on a negative (4).
1882
George Eastman and William Walker
devise a roll film holder and flexible film. In modified form, this configuration is used by most nondigital cameras today.
1904
Wire photos: Arthur Korn scans a photo with light and transmits the info
via telegraph wires.
1907
The Lumiere brothers’ Autochrome film uses colored starch grains to create images by filtering light.
1925
Paul Vierkotter invents the modern flashbulb, a magnesium wire encased in glass.
1936
Agfacolor?Neu film uses a silver-based system similar to B&W, but with three layers of film, each treated with dye that absorbs its color complement (above).
1969
The CCD: Light strikes a silicon pixel, creating a charge. A computer reconstructs the image from these charges (above).
2002
Unlike CCDs, which record one color per pixel, a Foveon
detector records three: The silicon senses the colors as light
penetrates to different depths (above).
2008
Organic light-emitting diodes replace LCDs in most cameras.
2010
Show off your pictures on thin electronic paper.
2040
Project your life-size 3-D pictures into the center of a room.
2100
Built-in embedded eyeball camera: Just press a tooth or think a command to snap a photo from your retina.
Compiled by Martha Harbison
Photographs, from top:
Courtesy Eastman Kodak
Courtesy Canon
Courtesy NASA
National Archives/Cartographic Section
Illustrations by Jason Lee
