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In 1800, Thomas Wedgwood experimented with "sun photography" by placing opaque objects on leather treated with silver nitrate; which created images that disappeared rapidly if displayed under light stronger than from candles. Wedgwood was one of the first known people to experiment with substances that were altered when exposed to light.
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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.
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Nicéphore Niépce produces first permanent photograph of a view from nature. Uses the photosensitivity of bitumen of Judea. He combine the camera obscura with photosensitive paper.
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Henry Fox Talbot creates permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. Talbot created positive images by contact printing onto another sheet of paper.
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The first American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera. Wolcott opened, which may have been the world's first portrait studio as well. In 1842, Wolcott discovered a combination of chemicals, known in London as Wolcotts's mixture, which reduced sitting time and was very sensitive to the action of light.
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The first advertisement which a photograph was made in Philadelphia in 1843.
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Frederick Scott Archer, a sculptor in London, improves photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcoohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. Wet plate collodion photography was much cheaper than daguerreotypes, the negative/positive process permitted unlimited reproductions, and the process was published but not patented.
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Thomas Sutton gets the first patent for his panoramic camera. The camera lens is made up of two hollow glass hemispheres. The flap on the front of the camera lifts up to allow an image to be taken.
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Matthew Brady takes a photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln in New York.
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In London, James Clerk Maxwell demonstrates a projected color photographic image, using three different color filters.
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Scottish physicist, James Clerk Marshall dabbled in color theory throughout his life, eventually producing the first color photograph in 1861. Maxwell created the image of the tartan ribbon shown here by photgraphing it three times thorugh red, blue, and yellow filters, the recombining the images into one color composite.
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Eadweard Muybridge developed a shutter for his camera. This allowed him to photograph images in motion; up to that point the subject of a picture had to be still for long periods of time.
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Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera.
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1985: Minolta markets the world's first autofocus SLR system (called "Maxxum" in the US); In the American West by Richard Avedon. It was the first
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Up until this point, photographs were in black and white. Auguste and Louis Lumiere introduced the Autochrome, the first color camera available to the public. The autochrome was the principal color photography process used before the invention of subtractive color film.
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Using wires, AT&T sent a photograph across a distance. This opened the doors for the picture transmission of television.
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Noted French scientist Francois Arago, with Daguerre, announces the details of the first commercially practical photographic process, the daguerreotype, before a joint session of the French Academies of Science and Fine Arts. A sharp mirror-like image on a silvered copper plate, the daguerreotype exploits a photosensitive latent image that is developed with mercury. The direct positive images start a craze of popular interest.
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Dr. Edwin Land Invented an "instant" picture process, first called Polaroid Land. The special camera sandwiched the exposed negative with a receiving positive paper and spread the processing chemicals between the two, after processing these were peeled apart.
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A system called DX coding was introduced for 35mm films. The cassettes have an auto-sensing code printed on them which enable certain cameras to automatically set the film speed, this information can also be used by processing laboratories.
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Adobe Photoshop 1.0 image manipulation program is introduced for Apple Macintosh computers
