Advances in Photography During the Nineteenth Century
Overview
In August 1839, at a joint meeting of the French Academies of Sciences and Fine Arts, the astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) announced Louis Daguerre's (1787-1851) method of obtaining pictures by the interaction of light and chemicals. Daguerre's discovery instantly captured the imagination of the public everywhere. But the invention of photography is actually the work of three men. The combined efforts of Daguerre, Joseph Niépce (1765-1833), and William Talbot (1800-1877) altered for all time how people see themselves and the world around them.
Background
In ancient times the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) described how during a partial eclipse of the sun, the gaps between the leaves of a tree cast images of the crescent-shaped sun on the ground. During the Renaissance, artists in Europe applied this optical principle to create the camera obscura, or darkened room, in which light passing through a small hole in a windowcovering projected an image on the opposite wall. By the seventeenth century the camera obscura was no longer a room but a portable box. It was an indispensable tool in working out accurate and proportionally correct renditions of buildings, landscapes, and people.
The desire of post-Renaissance society to portray things as seen by the eye rather than the mind contributed to a climate of scientific inquiry that emerged in the sixteenth century.
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