Inventions are rarely devised by one person or appear at a precise date. Often there are several individuals working to the same end, at different times and unaware of the others. Think of the motor car, telephone, personal computer or the cinema. Eventually one comes out ahead and is hailed as the 'inventor'.
Coming up with a date when photography was 'invented' is a fraught exercise: 1727, 1802, 1826, 1834 and 1837, are all potential candidates. But like so many inventions photography has its origins in the work of many people working from the late 18th century and, of course, it depends on how one defines photography.
If you took a poll then 1839 would be the date that most people would say that photography was 'invented'.
That year was the culmination of several decades of work and it saw the announcement of two separate photographic processes: Frenchman Louis Daguerre's daguerreotype and Britain's Henry Talbot's photogenic drawing process.
Of these, Daguerre's was by far the most successful commercially, leading to the growth of portrait studios as it, arguably, produced the better image. Daguerre's process made a single image, Talbot's produced a negative from which multiple positive prints could be made. It was Talbot's process, which he patented as the Calotype in 1841, which formed the basis of photography, with later improvements, until the advent of digital photography from the 1990s.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
AP reader Jose Casas-Finet from the United States wrote to the editor recently suggesting that AP commemorate the 200th anniversary of photography this month. He suggested that 16 September 1824 was the first evidence of a photograph from life being made in a letter from Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to his older brother, Claude.
Niépce has a better claim than most for the invention of photography and his experiments in the 1820s helped Daguerre in his invention of the daguerreotype.
This story is from the September 10, 2024 edition of Amateur Photographer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 10, 2024 edition of Amateur Photographer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Reader Portfolio
Spotlight on readers' excellent images and how they captured them
Bolsey-Flex
John Wade discovers a snapshot camera with an illustrious ancestry
Oppo Find X8 Pro
With four high-resolution sensors and a Hasselblad partnership, Amy Davies asks is this Oppo worth its flagship asking price?
Close encounters
Entrants to Close-up Photographer of the Year 6, supported by Affinity Photo, share their stories and techniques with competition co-founder Tracy Calder
Deuter Jaypack 34+
Angela Nicholson reviews a rugged and versatile camera backpack
Small is beautiful
In the late 1970s, Olympus launched the XA range of 35mm ultra-compacts, followed later by the mju family. John Gilbey looks at what they still have to offer
Blur
Harry Borden looks back on two shoots in the early 1990s with the then-upcoming Britpop band
Winning ways
In its eighth year, Portrait of Britain offers a rare moment to reflect on the diverse heritage of modern Britain. Peter Dench talks to some of the winners of Volume 7
Calling The Shots: A Queer History of Photography
Offering an unprecedented view of photographic history through a queer lens, this is a wonderful and powerful book, says
Large-aperture standard zoom, too
SONY has also revealed a new premium standard zoom, the FE 28-70mm F2 GM.