Home » Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture
Photography
First Prints and A Flash of Light
By Sara Allison
People began attempting to record images to paper long ago. In fact, a pinhole camera, which uses a simple hole as a lense, is referenced as far back as the fifth century B.C. in China. But it wasn't until 1825 that Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce printed the first permanent photograph. His process involved spreading Judea bitumen spread (a petroleum derivative which is light sensitive) on a silver plate, which he exposed for several days.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre is credited as the inventor of the first practical process of photography. Exposure time for his first daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, so the process was impractical for portraits. He exposed the image directly onto a copper plate, which was coated with a layer of silver halide particles. The plate was put in the obscura where it was exposed to light, and then put over mercury vapors until an image appeared. The image was fixed once the plate was immersed in sodium thiosulfate (salt) and toned with gold chloride.
William Fox Talbot also discovered a way to modify a silver process image, and in 1840 invented the calotype process. This process created a negative image and allowed it to be developed outside of the camera, making multiple prints possible. But the largest advancements in photography came when sensitized materials could be coated onto plate glass. Since this process required coating the glass with a liquid emulsion, the photographer had to work quickly, or the coating would dry out.
George Eastman began learning about photography in 1874, and set out to make the process easier. Three years later he made things simpler by developing a dry photographic plate. By 1884, he was able to replace glass plates with paper rolls that had a photo-emulsion coating on which images could be produced. In 1888, he received a patent for a camera that used a roll of film, making photography more accessible to the average person. The first known color photograph was taken in 1861 by physicist, James Clerk Maxwell. But it wasn't until 1935 that Eastman's Kodak Company introduced Kodachrome, which was the first modern color film.
As cameras improved, photographers began exploring ways to use artificial light to improve photo quality. The first flashes used magnesium flash powder and were ignited by hand. In 1893, a French engineer named Chauffour developed a device similar to a flashbulb that contained magnesium ribbon in a glass bulb, and was fired electrically. In 1925, Paul Vierkötter, used flash powder inside an empty bulb. Two years later, General Electric invented the modern flashbulb, although some credit Johannes Ostermeier.
The first flash bulbs were disposable and fitted into a flashgun, which was built onto many cameras but also came as a separate accessory. These bulbs were made of glass and had a metal cap with a screw. As cameras advanced, they were fitted with flashguns (or synchronizers) to fire a bulb when the shutter opened, which created predictable exposures and improved photo quality.
Kodak developed the Flashcube in the late 1960s, which had four electrically fired flashbulbs with an integral reflector shaped in a cube. Their Magicubes, introduced in the 70s were similar, and fired the light flash mechanically. This meant no batteries were required and made cheap flash cameras possible. Automatic flashguns have now replaced flash bulbs, almost completely. Most flash units have xenon flash lamps, which contain a tube filled with xenon gas where a high voltage of electricity is produced to make an electrical arc that emits a flash of light.
Digital cameras have made taking pictures even easier. These cameras use an electronic image sensor to record the image as electronic data instead of using the chemical changes required on film. Today, with automatic flashes and digital advancement, taking well-lit pictures and printing them is easy for anyone!