History of Photography Timeline

In 1816, using paper coated with silver chloride, Nicéphore Niépce succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives and not permanent, as he could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when exposed to light for viewing.

Image source: Nicéphore Niépce

In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure were required and the earliest results were very crude. The oldest surviving photograph of the image formed in a camera was created by Niépce in 1826 or 1827.

Image source: View from the Window at Le Gras

French-born Hércules Florence developed his own photographic technique in 1832 or 1833 in Brazil, with some help of pharmacist Joaquim Corrêa de Mello. He reportedly referred to the technique as "photographie" as early as 1833, but did not properly fix his images or publish his findings.

Image source: Hércules Florence

Charles Wheatstone developed his mirror stereoscope around 1832, but did not really publicize his invention until June 1838, laying groundwork for stereoscopic photography.

Image source: Charles Wheatstone

Niépce died suddenly in 1833, leaving his notes to Louis Daguerre, who continued developing the photographic process that would become the daguerreotype.

Henry Fox Talbot had already succeeded in creating stabilized photographic negatives on paper in 1835, but worked on perfecting his own process after reading early reports of Daguerre's invention.

Image source: Henry Fox Talbot

In 1837, mineralist-writer Franz von Kobell shot finely detailed salt-paper negatives of different perspectives of the Munich Frauenkirche and other local buildings. Kobell revealed his work in 1839, together with Carl August von Steinheil.

Image source: Wolfgang Franz von Kobell

In 1839, John Herschel made the first glass negative, but his process was difficult to reproduce. Herschel also provided Talbot with an effective fixer based on hyposulfite of soda (sodium thiosulfate).

Image source: John Herschel

The coining of the word photography is usually attributed to Sir John Herschel in 1839, giving the new medium its enduring name.

Image source: Photography

In 1839, François Arago reported the invention of photography to stunned listeners by displaying the first photo taken in Egypt; that of Ras El Tin Palace.

Image source: François Arago

On 7 January 1839, Daguerre's complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, and the news quickly spread around the world.

Image source: Daguerreotype

On August 2, 1839 Daguerre demonstrated the details of the daguerreotype process to the Chamber of Peers in Paris, building public and governmental support for the invention.

Complete instructions for the daguerreotype process were made public on 19 August 1839, allowing anyone to practice the first commercially successful form of photography.

In 1841, Talbot invented the calotype process, which, like Daguerre's process, used the principle of chemical development of a faint or invisible "latent" image to reduce the exposure time to a few minutes.

Image source: Calotype

Slovene Janez Puhar invented a process for making photographs on glass in 1841; it was recognized on June 17, 1852, in Paris by the Académie National Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale.

Image source: Johann Pucher

Between 1841 and 1842 Henry Collen made calotypes of statues, buildings and portraits, including a portrait of Charles Babbage shot in August 1841.

Image source: Henry Collen

David Brewster developed a stereoscope with lenses and a binocular camera in 1844, advancing stereoscopic photography. He presented two stereoscopic self portraits made by John Adamson in March 1849.

Image source: David Brewster

Results were demonstrated by Edmond Becquerel as early as 1848, but exposures lasting for hours or days were required and the captured colors were so light-sensitive they would only bear very brief inspection in dim light.

Image source: Edmond Becquerel

The first color photograph was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in a lecture by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who had proposed the three-color method in 1855.

Image source: James Clerk Maxwell

Two French inventors, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros, working unknown to each other during the 1860s, famously unveiled their nearly identical ideas on the same day in 1869.

Image source: Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron

Maxwell's color method was made practical by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's 1873 discovery of a way to make emulsions sensitive to the rest of the spectrum, gradually introduced into commercial use beginning in the mid-1880s.

Image source: Hermann Wilhelm Vogel

The first widely used method of color photography was the Autochrome plate, a process inventors and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière began working on in the 1890s and commercially introduced in 1907.

Image source: Autochrome Lumière

A new era in color photography began with the introduction of Kodachrome film, available for 16 mm home movies in 1935 and 35 mm slides in 1936. Its multilayer emulsion approach pioneered modern color film.

Image source: Kodachrome

In the mid-20th century, developments made it possible for amateurs to take pictures in natural color as well as in black-and-white, transforming everyday photography.

Image source: Color photography

In 1851, English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process, which dramatically reduced exposure times and became the dominant photographic method of the mid-19th century.

Image source: Collodion process

Other mid-nineteenth-century photographers established the medium as a more precise means than engraving or lithography of making a record of landscapes and architecture: for example, Robert Macpherson's broad range of photographs of Rome, the interior of the Vatican, and the surrounding countryside became a sophisticated tourist's visual record of his own travels.

In America, by 1851 a broadsheet by daguerreotypist Augustus Washington was advertising prices ranging from 50 cents to $10, showing how portrait photography had become a commercial service.

Image source: Augustus Washington

Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary. In 1881, Theodore Lilienthal published his discovery, and the German-born, New Orleans photographer successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Image source: History of photography

In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around.

Image source: George Eastman

In July 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others.

Image source: Kodak

Photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie, an inexpensive camera that put picture-taking within reach of ordinary people.

Image source: Kodak Brownie

In 1957, a team led by Russell A. Kirsch produced one of the earliest digital images by scanning a photograph, marking the beginning of digital imaging technology.

Image source: Russell Kirsch

The charge-coupled device (CCD), which enables electronic capture of images, was invented in 1969 by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, laying the foundation for digital cameras.

Image source: Charge-coupled device

In 1973 Fairchild Semiconductor released the first large image-capturing CCD chip: 100 rows and 100 columns, bringing solid-state image sensors closer to practical use.

Image source: Fairchild Semiconductor

In 1986 Kodak scientists developed the world's first megapixel sensor, a milestone in the resolution of digital image capture.

The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes).

Image source: Les Horribles Cernettes

During the first decade of the 21st century, film declined as digital cameras became cheaper, easier to use, and better in image quality, fundamentally changing how people take and share photographs.

Image source: Digital camera

Since then sites and apps such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa (discontinued in 2016), Imgur, Photobucket and Snapchat have been used by many millions of people to share their pictures.

Image source: Instagram