Invention Of Photography example essay topic

376 words
Sir John Herschel first used the word photography, which is derived from the Greek words for light and writing, in 1839, the year the photographic process became public. There had been previous attempts to make photographs using two different methods, but they had never been successfully combined. The first method was optical. Since the 16th century artists and scientists had made use of the fact that light passing through a small hole in one wall of a dark room, or camera obscura, projects an inverted image on the opposite wall. The hole was soon replaced with a lens, which made the image brighter and sharper. By the 18th century a portable box had replaced the room.

The second method was chemical. In 1727, Johann Heinrich Schulze had discovered that certain chemicals, especially silver halides, turn dark when exposed to light. Louis J.M. Daguerre produced a one of a kind picture on metal called the Daguerreotype. William Henry Talbot invented the Calotype in 1840, which produced a negative picture on paper, the lights of the images were recorded as darks, and the darks were recorded as lights. The Calotype was good because an infinite number of prints could be made from a single negative. The ever-increasing ease with which photography recorded visual information and distributed it worldwide made it the most powerful tool of communication since the invention of the printing press.

The invention of photography changed history because it allows everyone to get information without having to be able read. Someone once said " a picture is worth a thousand words". Pictures can capture emotions and settings better then words can sometimes. Photographs mean a lot in peoples lives.

They capture memories and faces that people don't want to forget. When they look back at the photographs they can remember the event and how they were feeling the moment the picture was taken. A photograph can tell you exactly what was happening in that place at that point in time. Photographs can't tell the history of a place however. The invention of photography has been one of the most useful and important inventions of all times.