The Camera Obscura
On
24 January 1544 mathematician and instrument maker Reiners Gemma
Frisius of Leuven University used one to watch a solar
eclipse, publishing a diagram of his method in De Radio Astronimica et
Geometrico in the following year. In 1558 Giovanni Batista della
Porta was the first to recommend the method as an aid to
drawing. Photographic cameras were a development of the camera
obscura, a device dating back to the ancient Chinese and ancient
Greeks,which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of
the scene outside upside-down onto a viewing surface.
Before
the invention of photographic processes there was no way to preserve the images
produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing them. The earliest cameras
were room-sized, with space for one or more people inside; these gradually
evolved into more and more compact models such as that by Niépce's time
portable handheld cameras suitable for photography were readily available. The
first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography
was envisioned by Johann Zahn in 1685, though it would be almost 150
years before such an application was possible.
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