Week One

Question 1

Camera Obscura

Answer 1

• Latin for “dark chamber.”
• A box or a room that is light-tight except for a hole in one side.
• Light from outside the box passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside.
• Image is projected upside-down. Color and perspective are preserved.
• Glass lenses were added to make the image appear sharper.
• Evidence exists that artists have used them for thousands of years.
• Later adapted as a semi-compact drawing tool.

Question 2

When were the first photographs produced?

Answer 2

Between 1810 and 1820.

Question 3

What were the first photographs?

Answer 3

Impermanent inverted images (negatives).

Question 4

Who made the first permanent photograph, and when?

Answer 4

Nicephore Niepce in 1826-1827.

Question 5

Who worked on Niepce’s process and improved it, and when/why?

Answer 5

Louis-Jacques Daguerre, because the notes for Niepce’s photographic experiments were left to him after Niepce died in 1833.

Question 6

What was Daguerre’s process called and when did he publish instructions for it?

Answer 6

The Daguerrotype, in 1839.

Question 7

Daguerrotype

Answer 7

• Polished sheet of silver-plated copper is fumed over iodine and made light sensitive.
• The plate is then exposed in the camera, then “developed” over mercury vapor.
• The image is made permanent by washing the plate in a bath of sodium theosulfate.
• Produces an exact reproduction of the scene.
• Took several minutes for an exposure.
• Produced only one image; the image could not be duplicated as with film.

Question 8

Talbot, Eastman, and Bayard made similar advancements when? In what way were their advancements different?

Answer 8

In the 1840s; they used paper instead of copper.

Question 9

What is the collodion process? Who developed it, and when?

Answer 9

A method for making reproducable images; Frederick Archer in 1851.

Question 10

Who made the first color photograph and when?

Answer 10

Thomas Sutton in 1861.

Question 11

Who developed rolls of film and when?

Answer 11

Eastman Kodak in 1884.

Question 12

When was Kodachrome film developed?

Answer 12

1935.

Question 13

When was Polaroid founded?

Answer 13

1937.

Question 14

When was the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) developed, and by whom?

Answer 14

1969 by AT&T Bell Labs.

Question 15

What revolutionary product did Kodak release in 1978?

Answer 15

400-speed slide film (the fastest at the time).