The First Underwater Color Photograph was Taken off The Florida Keys In 1921

National Camera Day is June 29, a day to celebrate the fact that photography, once so complicated it took a scientist to understand, is now part of our everyday lives. The word “photography” is based on two Greek words that, when put together, mean “writing with light.’”

It’s a beautiful way of describing what a camera lets us do — tell a story without the use of words. It all goes back more than 800 years to the invention of the camera obscura. Meaning “dark chamber,” the camera obscura was nothing more than a box with a hole on one side. Light would pass through the hole and into the dark interior of the box, where it would project an image onto the flat inner surface.

Unfortunately, when the light was gone, the image disappeared — like Instagram, but without an actual photo. Fast-forward through the centuries to today, when everyone with a smartphone has a camera at their fingertips. Whether you love shooting film and changing lenses or prefer the ease of digital, use June 29 to focus on how cameras have made telling our stories easier than ever.

• 400 BC – The Chinese provide the earliest known written record of their exploration of camera obscura, or pinhole imagery.
• 1825 – Joseph Niépce was a French inventor; he is most noted as one of the inventors of photography and was a pioneer in the field. He developed the heliograph; a technique used to produce the world’s first known photograph in 1825, the view from the window at Le Gras the family’s estate.
• 1839 – Louis Jacques Daguerre invents the Daguerreotype, the first commercially successful photographic process for creating a permanent image on a metal plate.
• 1841 – William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Calotype process, the first negative-positive process that makes it possible to reproduce multiple copies of a picture.
• 1850s – The idea of HDR photography was first started in the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray.  Gustave Le Gray used one negative for the sky and one with a longer exposure for the sea and combined the two into one picture.
• 1856 – Tintypes were developed in 1856 by Hamilton Smith and decades later, George Eastman invented flexible and unbreakable film that could be rolled. This was the birth of the first Kodak offered for sale in 1888.
• 1861 – The first ever color photograph was taken in 1861 by physicist James Clark Maxwell.
• 1870s – English photographer Harry Pointer was the first person to start photographing cats in amusing positions. He started by taking natural photos of cats, but it wasn’t long before he realized that he had much more success selling photographs of cats in ridiculous poses.
• 1884 – The first known photograph of a tornado was taken on 28 August 1884, about 22 miles (45 kilometers) southwest of Howard, South Dakota by an unknown photographer.
• 1900 – The first mass-marketed camera goes on sale and the public goes wild.
• 1903 – The Wright Brothers invent the airplane, which revolutionizes aerial photography, making it a significant tool for the military.
• 1925 – The Leica I becomes the first practical and commercially successful 35 mm camera, a favorite of photojournalists.
• 1925 – The photo booth was invented by Anatol Josepho, a Russian in NYC in 1925, which subsequently led to the creation of the Photomaton Company.
• 1926 – The first underwater color photograph was taken off the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico by Dr. William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin in 1926.
• 1934 – Kodak released its Retina I in 1934 though 35 mm cameras were still out of reach for most people things would soon change with the introduction of the inexpensive Argus A in 1936.
• 1935 – Eastman introduces Kodachrome, the first and arguably best color transparency film.
• 1936 – The Japanese camera industry began with the birth of Canon in 1936 with its 35 mm rangefinder.
• 1936 – Henry Luce’s “Life” becomes the first all-photographic magazine to appear on newsstands
• 1948 – George Land invents the Land Camera, the world’s first instant-picture, no development-needed camera.
• 1970s -1970s – Numerous manufacturers went to work on cameras that stored images electronically, resulting in the first point-and-shoot cameras.
• 1975 – Digital camera was invented by Steve Sasson in 1975 at Eastman Kodak.
• 1989 – The first digital camera that was commercially sold was in December of 1989 in Japan, the DS-X by Fuji.
• 1991 –  Kodak brought to market the Kodak DCS-100, the beginning of a long line of professional Kodak DCS SLR cameras that were based in part on film bodies. It used a 1.3-megapixel sensor and was priced at $13,000.
• 1988 – The standardization of JPEG and MPEG in 1988, allowed images and video files to be compressed for storage onto a SD or CF card.
• 1994 – Apple released it’s first digital camera in 1994, the Apple Quicktake, which was designed by Kodak.
• 1999 – With the introduction of the Nikon D1 in 1999 at 2.47 megapixels, this was the first digital SLR that was entirely by a major manufacturer. The D1 cost just under $6,000 and was inexpensive for professional photographers and high-end consumers. This camera also used Nikon F-mount lenses, which meant photographers could utilize many of the lenses they already owned.
• 2000 – The first mobile phone with a built-in camera is introduced.
• 2004 – Kodak stops making film cameras.
• 2010 – nearly all mobile phones featured built-in camera with a resolution of 1-2 megapixels digital video camera. Many cameras also featured built-in GPS.
• There are 12 very expensive Hasselblad cameras on the Moon’s surface.  They were used during the first moon landing but had to be left there, so the astronauts could carry back rock samples.
• Today, people capture as many photos in less than two minutes than the entire population did during the 1800s.
• Dills Parekh from Mumbai, India is the owner of the largest camera collection in the world.  He owns more than 4,425 cameras and has been collecting them since 1977.
• Recent estimates say the human race has taken more than 3.8 trillion photos so far and the numbers are rising rapidly.
• The word camera originates from the Latin word “camera obscura” which means “dark chamber”.
• The word “photography” originates from Greek, meaning drawing with light.
• All sensors of modern cameras only capture in black and white. It then calculates red, green, and blue tints according to the luminescence to add color to the picture.
• The first digital camera only had 0.01 megapixels, weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg) and took 23 seconds to record a picture on a cassette tape.
• There is an average of 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day.
•  Research by Kelsey Blackburn and James Schirillo of Wake Forest University, North Carolina found that our left side is our ‘better’ side to be photographed.
• George Eastman, also known as “The Father of Photography,” brought the camera to the masses.  While he did not invent the camera, he did invent many additions that improved the use, ease, and production of the camera, making it widely available to homes around the world.
• The original camera was large and bulky but has now evolved into something that can be as small as a pen.  Cameras have many features and variations, making them appealing to men and women of all ages for personal and professional use.

Sources:

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