Photo History - 5th BCE - 1853 timeline

Feb 1st, 1839 - Talbot

visits Sir John Herschel for tea and is shown Sodium Hyposulphate. (Fixer)

Sept 20th, 1839 - Daguerre

instructions arrived in America

Samuel Morse was early champion.

1840 - Richard Beard

bought patent rights to daguerreotype in England

Hired John Frederick Goddard to increase plates light sensitivity

Goddard refumed plate with bromide - increased speed 5 to 10 times.

1841 - Antoine Francois Jean Claudet

also invented a chlorine and iodine vapor accelerator for same purpose.

1841 - Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau

invents gilding. (Improves contrast & less susceptible to abrasion and oxidation.)

1843 - John Plumbe Jr.

began advertising his ability to make a color daguerreotype portrait.

1844 - Blanquart-Evrard

bathes Calotype negative twice increasing sensitivity and tonal range of negative.

1844 - Talbot

sues and court agrees but published findings anyway. Calotype now free of Talbot patent in France.

1845 - Christian Frederick Schönbei

discovered guncotton by putting cotton fibers in a mixture of sulfuric & nitric acids

1847 - John Parker Maynard

discovered collodion by dissolving guncotton in ether

1847 - Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor

found that albumen coated on glass provided a suitable medium for sensitive salts

1850 - Gustave le Gray

suggests collodion could work for holding light sensitive material to glass

1851 - Frederick Scott Archer

introduces the process of Wet Collodion

1851 - Gustave le Gray

waxes Calotype negative before sensitizing which increased detail but lost sensitivity

1852 - Archer

announces new collodion process of a whitened negative - backed with black

Called Ambrotype.

1853 - Adolphe Martin

introduces collodion process on metal called tintype

Daguerreotype plate Sizes - Whole plate

6 ½ x 8 ½

Daguerreotype plate Sizes - Half plate

4 ¼ x 5 ½

Daguerreotype plate Sizes - Quarter plate

3 ¼ x 4 ¼

Daguerreotype plate Sizes -Sixth plate

2 ¾ x 3 ¼

Daguerreotype plate Sizes - Ninth Plate

2 x 2 ½

Daguerreotype plate Sizes - Sixteenth plate

1 3/8 x 1 5/8

Mo Tzu - 5th BCE

observes inverted image as light passes through small hole.

Aristotle - 350 BCE

Observed solar eclipses as light passed through leaves

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) - 1030 ACE

Used pinhole aperture to view an eclipse

image became more focused with smaller apertures

Filippo Brunelleschi - early 1400’s

won architectural competition to design dome of Florence’s Snato Maria del Fiore

used architectural drawings from camera obscura

Leon Battista Alberti - 1435

illustrated concept of the theoretical and real window of the camera obscura

Showed possibilities the optical instrument offered

explains how idea of perspective worked in Treatise de Pictura

Da Vinci - 1490

First recorded drawing of a camera obscura and operation made in his Codex Atlanticus

Giambattista Della Porta - 1558

wrote about focusing abilities of differently shaped glass in 4 volume Magia Naturalis

Girolama Cardano - 1568

placed lens on camera obscura, described in the book La Prattica Della Perspettiva

Johannes Kepler - 1604

Worked out relationship between mirrors, lenses and vision

5 years later, wrote Astronomia Nova, changed thought on light

Credited with term ‘Camera Obscura’

Sir Isaac Newton - 1675

demonstrated with a prism that white light was entire spectrum of colors

Johann Heinrich Schulze - 1727

discovered the darkening effects of light on silver

Used paper cutout over bottle, exposed silver

Carl Wilhelm Scheele - 1777

Published “Chemical Observations and Experiments on Air and Fire”

Described effect of blue-violet light on silver chloride

Discovered silver chloride could be dissolved by ammonia, darkened metallic silver was impervious to it

Jean Hellot - 1737

recommended using dilute silver nitrate as invisible ink for spy espionage

Count Franzesco Algorotti - 1764

suggested in Saggio sopra Pittura that many Italian painters used camera obscura, explained realism and perspective, ex. Vermeer

Gilles-Louis Chrétien - 1786

Invented physionotrace

Elizabeth Fulhame - 1794

Wanted to stain fabrics with heavy metals

Discovery of Catalysis credited as beginning of photography as art-based science

Thomas Wedgwood & Sir Humphry Davy - 1802

Made first photograms - called them sunprints - image didn’t stay

William Hyde Wollaston - 1806

Invented camera lucida

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce - 1816 - 17

attempted the second “camera obscura-based” images

tried using guaiacum, would change color and become insoluble when exposed

Sir John Herschel - 1819

discovered silver chloride dissolves in hyposulphite of soda as fast as sugar in water

Niépce - 1822

produced copy of an engraving by exposing a glass plate coated with bitumen of Judea

Niépce - 1824

first continuous tone image of a landscape on lithographic stone - accidently destroyed image

Niépce - 1826

first positive photographic image - Heliography, called images “retinas”

Later makes eight-hour exposure of courtyard - first photograph from nature

Niépce - 1827

travels to England to present work to Royal Society - won’t give details of research

received letter from stranger - Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre

December - Niépce meets Daguerre in Paris on a trip to visit brother Claude in London

Niépce - 1829

creates still life - wants to publish findings - Daguerre convinces him to wait, they partner

Daguerre - 1829 - 33

travels to Gras to work with Niépce - develops physautotype (fizz-auto-type).

Niépce - 1833

dies of a stroke, son Isadore replaces him in partnership

William Henry Fox Talbot - 1833

takes camera lucida on honeymoon to Lake Como - Draws bad pictures

Daguerre - 1834

sensitizes exposed plates with heated mercury vapors, speeds process

Talbot - 1834

Experiments and produces photograms - called photogenic drawings

Talbot - 1835

creates the first camera-made negative of the latticed window at Lacock Abbey

Daguerre - 1837

makes image stable by treating it in a bath of sodium chloride

Daguerre & Isadore - 1838

try to market process by subscription but fail

Count Dominique Francois Arago - 1838

Recruited by daguerre & Isadore (French physicist and director of the Paris Observatory)

Daguerre & Isadore - Jan 7th 1839

process announced to Academy of Sciences - Two weeks later Talbot hears & writes letter to Arago

Talbot - Jan 31st, 1839

Presented to Royal Society in London

Talbot - Feb 20, 1839

Releases technique to the public (with no patent)

Hippolyte Bayard - May 20th, 1839

tells Arago of his own invention, paid to keep quiet

Daguerre - Aug. 19th, 1839

demonstrates Daguerreotype process officially

Talbot - 1840

creates Calotype after trying to re-sensitize a piece of paper

Talbot - Feb. 8th, 1841

puts very restrictive patent on new process

David Octavious Hill & Robert Adamson (Hill and Adamson) - 1843

start creating portraits of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland.

Anna Atkins - 1843

releases book British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions - collection of cyanotype photograms

Talbot - 1844

Established Reading Establishment to produce the “first photographic book” called Pencil of Nature