About National Camera Day

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Photography enthusiasts have a lot to celebrate on National Camera Day. Today is the anniversary of the first Kodak camera sold on June 29, 1888.

The camera documents whatever is happening in the world. Before its invention, people relied on paintings, which were very expensive and viewable by a select group of people. Photography changed that. It documents day-to-day living quickly and reproduces readily.

The camera is not a recent invention.

Several cultures claim the invention of the camera. Ibn Yunus of Egypt is often cited in Western cultures as the inventor, sometime near 1000 AD.

However, written documentation of pinhole style, or camera obscura, existed nearly 1400 years earlier, in 391 BC, according to Chinese records. Therein, Mozi writes of the process used in pinhole cameras to project an image.

These early cameras, however, did not allow for the collection of an image, only its projection. That changed early in the nineteenth century.

The first photograph was taken by Nicephore Niepce in 1814, and he recorded the image on silver chloride-coated paper. This prototype, however, was temporary. In 1827, he produced a more permanent photograph using a wooden camera developed by Charles and Vincent Chevalier.

The first modern photograph was developed in 1836 by Louis Daguerre using a copper and silver mix plate coated with iodine vapor. George Eastman of the Kodak Company produced the first film camera.

By the early 2000s, cameras became digitized, resulting in higher resolutions and more detailed photographs that are much more easily reproduced and shared. The addition of cameras to cellular phones has democratized photography for the world.