KIMYA B. OSKAY

In this post, I want to honor the first announced camera and its pioneers. Additionally, I want to provide a concise overview of the introduction of the first camera. So let’s start!

The story of the first photographic camera is a fascinating one, as it was born at a time when the world was ready to embrace this incredible invention. According to Siegfried Kracauer, photography was truly lucky to have appeared at a time when the ground was well-prepared for it [1]. In fact, when the first photographic camera was announced to the public in 1839, nearly twenty-four people claimed to have invented it [2]. Join me as we take a journey through time to explore the rich history of this invention, and discover how it changed the world.

The Competition to Create Permanent Images

According to Mary Warner Marien, the French artist and cartographer Antoine Hercules Romuald Florence (1804-1897) was the first one using the term photographie for his technological process for printing images. However, he failed in producing permanent image. Another frenchman, Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833) also aimed to produce permanent images by benefiting from Camera Obscura. His studies started in 1816 and continued until his death and were independent from other precursors of photography. As the first achievement, he succeeded in printing images from lithographic stones that was inspired by and benefited from Camera Obscura. His second achievement was taking the world’s first permanent photograph, View from the Window at Gras, which captured from a Camera Obscura image in circa 1826. However, his achievements was still not providing the reproducibility and duplication of the captured permanent image. He named his process Heliography. In 1839, based on Niepce’s studies the photographic process was enhanced and five years after his death the first modern photographic camera was announced thanks to his partnership (signed previously in 1829) with Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851), the designer and the co-owner of the Diorama, an apparatus used for reflecting the realistic images on a theater scene and the audiences [3]. Nonetheless, the duplication of a photograph could not be achieved with this new modern photographic camera. The commercialization of it, on the other hand, emerged immediately beginning from the 1839.

A Shared Vision, A Single Patent

The literature of the history of photography reflects many contributors playing important roles in the enhancement of the photography. Notwithstanding independent efforts, even some of them ended up with the same innovations. This is why there were multiple claims of having invented/being inventor. They all served for the requirements of the technology but the winner was the first patentee. After few years of the dawn of various photographic usages, it almost developed in all continents of this globe, too.

Worldwide Spread of Photography

Among the 72 names of scientists under the first balcony of Eiffel tower, one of them is of Daguerre. In recognition of the contributions of men of science to the development of France, Gustave Eiffel chose those 72 names to be recorded on the Eiffel tower. Obviously, the thing that puts Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in the list of important names was the photographic medium he developed. He called as the inventor of the first commercialized photographic machine named Daguerreotype, which was the first stone of the marketed photography that has been surviving ever since. The adventure of commercialization that gave Daguerre this reputation started from 1839. ‘‘Daguerre wrote a booklet describing the process, An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama, which soon became a best seller; 29 editions and translations appeared before the end of 1839’’ [4]. The name of Daguerreotype began to adorn newspapers’ headlines from January 1839 as a release of a new technology. Newspapers of countries begun to announce daguerreotype in their own language which after France the first country faced daguerreotype’s public announcements was England. This was followed by America. Some of these newspapers published in France were Le Feuilleton du Siecle, Le Feuilleton national, Le Gazette de France [5] and Le Figaro; Journal Litterature et d’Arts [6], and – as an English-language newspaper published in France – Galignani’s Messenger [7]. This current was not only limited to France but also spread to other western countries. For instance, in England, the London Globe and in US presses such as New-York Evening Post for the Country [8] followed the trend as well.

The Game-Changing Partnership of Daguerreotype

As an English geologist and amateur photographer who was the writer of the first geological book with photographic illustrations [9], William Jerome Harrison (1845-1908) wrote about photography and its history in a book titled A History of Photography, published in 1887. According to Harrison, the first man to obtain a permanent photograph was Joseph Nicephore Niepce, who entered into a partnership with another investigator in 1829 and artist named Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851). This partnership’s goal was to discover the way of fixing camera-image. After his death in 1833, this partnership continued its life between Dauguerre and son of the Nicephore Niepce, Isidore Niepce. However, Nicephore Niepce died before publishing his invention of Heliograph [10]. Five years after older Niepce’s death, partnership was developed further and progressed the first modern photographic apparatus. Daguerre achieved the right to be announced as the inventor of it in 1837 and he named the camera Daguerreotype. Later, the partnership’s target became marketing of the photographic process. After trying a few unsuccessful attempts, they aimed to persuade the scientists to be able to convince potential customers about the Daguerreotype. In this respect, Daguerre presented his photographic developments to the well-known scientists [11] One of those scientists was French astronomer and physicist, Dominique Francois Arago [12].

The Journey of unlocking the potential of Photography starts

We understand from the report of Arago written for the Chamber of Deputies and the Academy of Science in 1839 how the adventure developed afterwards:

M. Arago wrote a report titled ‘‘Rapport de M. Arago, sur le Daguerreotype, Lu à la séance de la Chambre des Députés le 3 juillet 1839, et a l’Academie des Sciences, séance du 19 août’’ [13] which can be translated as ‘‘Report of M. Arago, on the Daguerreotype, read at the sitting of the Chamber of Deputies on July 3 1839, and at the Academy of Science’s meeting of August 19th.’’ Beside including technical informations about the daguerreotype, the report talks about how photography can be useful for France to benefit from it in scientific manner. For instance, it mentions on potential usage of photography in the discovery of heliographs of Egypt, because daguerreotype could serve real-image. This first impression of photography towards gathering information about the Orient is like the placement of first bricks in the usage of photography on collecting knowledge that then served for discovering the things exotic and colonies. Ali Behdad argues the reflection of this first impression as: