Historical Timeline 1515 to 1843

1515

Leonardo Da Vinci describes the camera obscura. By the middle of the seventeenth century the portable camera obscura had been developed. It consisted of two boxes, one sliding inside the other. On one a lens is fitted which casts an image on the translucent surface at the back of the other.

1666

Isaac Newton divides sunlight with a prism and discovers that white light is itself a combination of seven distinct colours. He believes these colours to be particles which bounce off objects and which are perceived in the eye by seven different colour receptors.

1750

Canaletto uses the camera obscura as an aid to his painting in Venice

1790

Thomas Wedgewood, in England, makes photograms by placing objects on leather sensitized with silver nitrate.

1801

Thomas Young propounds the 'three colour' idea of light. That there are three primary colours red, green and violet which move in waves. These three blend together to make up the whole spectrum and are received by only three cones in the eye.

1816

In France the Niepce brothers initiate experiments to create images using light-sensitive materials.

1826

Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) a French doctor, produces the world's first photograph using pewter plates in a camera obscura. Exposure was around eight hours.

1833

William Henry Fox Talbot starts the work that is to lead to the 1839 announcement by the British Royal Academy of the discovery of a way of obtaining images on paper by the action of light.

1835

Niépce and L.J.M. Daguerre produce the world's first daguerrotype photograph. To produce a daguerrotype a highly polished silvered copper plate is exposed to iodine vapour, leaving a thin coating of light sensitive silver iodide on it. After exposure the plate is placed over heated mercury, the vapour from which combines with the silver particles to create an image. Sodium thiosulphate fixes the image. The finished daguerrotype has to be framed behind glass with the edges sealed to prevent oxidation of the silver. The image in a daguerrotype is laterally inverted (as in a mirror) and the product is fragile. Each image is unique, and no copies can be made; this being the main reason that daguerrotypes became obsolete within 20 years of their invention.

1838

Charles Wheatstone discovers stereoscopic projection.

1839

Daguerre is awarded an annuity by the French government and his process is given to the world.

1841

Fox Talbot's calotype process is patented. This is the world's first multi-copy photographic process, using a negative/positive process, and material sensitized with silver iodide.

1842

Fox Talbot begins publication of The Pencil of Nature to indicate the range and possibilities of photography.

1843

Hill and Adamson begin to use calotypes for portrait photography in Edinburgh. They take photographs of the nearly 500 ministers gathered for their mass resignation from the Church of Scotland and the subsequent formation of the Free Church. These photographic studies were used as the basis of a subsequent painting by Hill: The Signing of the Deed of Demission.