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Mind Blown

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In this episode of the Future of Things, we take a look at something we all wish we could do better - taking great photos. From holiday snaps to carefully composed shots on your DSLR, @SeymourFuture examines what the future holds for camera technology.

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35mm film was successful for years but now has a competitor

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If you're a digital photography buff, here's some required trivia knowledge: what you see above is a photograph of the first digital camera ever built. It was created in December 1975 by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson, now regarded as the inventor of the digital camera. In a Kodak blog post written in 2007, Sasson explains how it was constructed:

It had a lens that we took from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line downstairs from our little lab on the second floor in Bldg 4. On the side of our portable contraption, we shoehorned in a portable digital cassette instrumentation recorder. Add to that 16 nickel cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, several dozen digital and analog circuits all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards, and you have our interpretation of what a portable all electronic still camera might look like.

Here are some specs: The 8 pound camera recorded 0.01 megapixel black and white photos to a cassette tape. The first photograph took 23 seconds to create.

To play back images, data was read from the tape and then displayed on a television set:

We're sure come a long way since then, eh?
Image credits: Photograph by Eastman Kodak

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The World's First Digital Camera by Kodak and Steve Sasson

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If you're a digital photography buff, here's some required trivia knowledge: what you see above is a photograph of the first digital camera ever built. It was created in December 1975 by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson, now regarded as the inventor of the digital camera.

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1928

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Collodion dry plates had been available since 1837, thanks to the work of Désiré van Monckhoven, but it was not until the invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox that the wet plate process could be rivaled in quality and speed. The 1878 discovery that heat-ripening a gelatin emulsion greatly increased its sensitivity finally made so-called "instantaneous" snapshot exposures practical.

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The use of photographic film was pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1888-1889. His first camera, which he called the "Kodak," was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding cameras.

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Quick Facts
"What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.""I don't believe in men waiting until they are ready to die before using any of their money for helpful purposes."

Name

George Eastman

Birth Date

July 12, 1854

Death Date

March 14, 1932

Did You Know?

Although Eastman invented amateur photography, there are very few pictures of him, and he often went unrecognized in his hometown of Rochester, which he had helped become a thriving community.

Did You Know?

Eastman was one of the first American industrialists to embrace and implement the concept of employee profit sharing in the United States.

Did You Know?

Eastman never married or had a family, citing being too busy and too poor when he was younger.

Place of Birth

Waterville, New York

Place of Death

Rochester, New York

Who Was George Eastman?

George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. In 1880, he opened the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. His first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. Later he offered the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children. By 1927, Eastman Kodak was the largest U.S. company in the industry. Eastman committed suicide in 1932.

Family

Named after his father George Washington Eastman, George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. George Sr. had started a small business school, Eastman Commercial College, in Rochester, where he moved the family in 1860. But he died suddenly when George Jr. was eight. One of young George's two older sisters was wheelchair-bound from polio and died when George was 16.

Education

George's mother, Mary, took in boarders to support the family, and George dropped out of high school at age 14 to add to the family income. He began as a messenger and office boy for insurance companies and studied accounting at home to qualify for a higher salary. He eventually landed a job as bookkeeper at the Rochester Savings Bank.

Inventions

When George was 24, he planned to visit Santo Domingo and, on the advice of a colleague, decided to document the trip. But the photography equipment alone was enormous, heavy and costly. He bought all the equipment, but he never took the trip.

Instead he began researching how to make photography less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy. After seeing a formula for a "dry plate" emulsion in a British publication, and getting tutelage from two local amateur photographers, Eastman formulated a gelatin-based paper film and a device for coating dry plates.

Kodak Photography

He resigned from his bank job after launching his fledgling photography company in April 1880. In 1885, he headed to the patent office with a roll-holder device that he and camera inventor William Hall Walker had developed. This allowed cameras to be smaller and cheaper.

Eastman also came up with the name Kodak, because he believed products should have their own identity, free from association with anything else. So in 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera (a few years later, he amended the company name to Eastman Kodak).

The company slogan was "You press the button, we do the rest," which meant the camera was sent in to the company after the 100 exposures on the roll of film had been used; they developed it and sent it back to the customer. In 1889, Eastman hired chemist Henry Reichenbach to develop a type of flexible film that could be more easily inserted into cameras. Thomas Edison adapted the film for use in the motion-picture camera he was developing, further propelling the success of Eastman's company.

The Brownie Camera

The Brownie camera was launched in 1900 to target new hobbyist photographers - children - and with its $1 price tag, it also became a favorite of servicemen. Eastman supported the military in other ways as well, developing unbreakable glass lenses for gas masks and a special camera for taking pictures from planes during World War I.

In all, Eastman's innovations started the amateur photography craze that is still going strong today.

Philanthropist

Although his company was essentially a monopoly for many years, Eastman was not the average corporate industrialist. He was one of the first American industrialists to embrace and implement the concept of employee profit sharing in the United States, and, in addition, he made an outright gift from his own money to each of his workers. In 1919, he added what is known now as stock options.

His generosity extended beyond his own business, as he gave to the struggling Mechanics Institute of Rochester, which became the Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). His high regard for education in general led him to contribute to University of Rochester, and the Hampton and Tuskegee institutes. "The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education," he said.

Dental clinics both in Rochester and in Europe were also a focus of his concern. "It is a medical fact," he said, "that children can have a better chance in life with better looks, better health and more vigor if the teeth, nose, throat and mouth are taken proper care of at the crucial time of childhood."

In all, it is estimated that Eastman contributed more than $100 million of his wealth for philanthropic purposes during his lifetime.

Death and Legacy

An avid cyclist, Eastman noticed a progressive immobility, the result of a degenerative condition that involved a hardening of the cells in the lower spinal cord. He also suffered from severe diabetes. So on March 14, 1932, at age 77, he took his own life with a single gunshot to the heart. A note he left said, "My work is done. Why wait?"

"The life of our communities in the future needs what our schools of music and of other fine arts can give them. It is necessary for people to have an interest in life outside their occupations." - George Eastman

He never married or had a family, citing being too busy and too poor when he was younger. He was an enthusiastic art collector on his long trips to Europe, and a music lover, establishing the prestigious Eastman School of Music in 1921 in Rochester, New York.

Overall, it is believed that he enjoyed his life, and he gave countless millions the opportunity to enjoy theirs with lasting memories captured on film.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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"What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are." "I don't believe in men waiting until they are ready to die before using any of their money for helpful purposes."

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In 1900, Eastman took mass-market photography one step further with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was extremely popular and various models remained on sale until the 1960s.

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Scientists of the National Trust - Fox Talbot

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Many scientists and inventors have lived and worked in places now cared for by the National Trust. One man who had a huge impact on the way we live today was William Henry Fox Talbot - the pioneer of photography - find out more about this remarkable man and take a look around Lacock Abbey, where he developed his fascinating process.

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a darkened box with a convex lens or aperture for projecting the image of an external object on to a screen inside, a forerunner of the modern camera.

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A Film by Nic Vevers | Music By Vanilla © 2013 {Official Selection} Canberra Short Film Festival 2012 | Byron Bay Film Festival 2013 Camera Obscura is a technique that creates a natural projection inside a darkened room as light passing thought a small hole or lens.

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Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France. He was apprenticed in architecture, theatre design, and panoramic painting to Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter. Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated designer for the theatre, and later came to invent the diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.

In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the world's first heliograph in 1822 and the first permanent camera photograph four years later. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting, and evolved the process which would subsequently be known as the daguerreotype. After efforts to interest private investors proved fruitless, Daguerre went public with his invention in 1839. At a joint meeting of the French Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts on 7 January of that year, the invention was announced and described in general terms, but all specific details were withheld. Under assurances of strict confidentiality, Daguerre explained and demonstrated the process only to the Academy's perpetual secretary François Arago, who proved to be an invaluable advocate. Members of the Academy and other select individuals were allowed to examine specimens at Daguerre's studio. The images were enthusiastically praised as nearly miraculous, and news of the daguerreotype quickly spread. Arrangements were made for Daguerre's rights to be acquired by the French Government in exchange for lifetime pensions for himself and Niépce's son Isidore; then, on 19 August 1839, the French Government presented the invention as a gift from France "free to the world", and complete working instructions were published.

In 1826, prior to his association with Daguerre, Niépce used a coating ofbitumen of Judea to make the first permanent camera photograph. The bitumen was hardened where it was exposed to light and the unhardened portion was then removed with a solvent. A camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required. Niépce and Daguerre later refined this process, but unacceptably long exposures were still needed.

After the death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre concentrated his attention on the light-sensitive properties of silver salts, which had previously been demonstrated by Johann Heinrich Schultz and others. For the process which was eventually named thedaguerreotype, he exposed a thin silver-plated copper sheet to the vapor given off by iodine crystals, producing a coating of light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface. The plate was then exposed in the camera. Initially, this process, too, required a very long exposure to produce a distinct image, but Daguerre made the crucial discovery that an invisibly faint "latent" image created by a much shorter exposure could be chemically "developed" into a visible image. Upon seeing the image, the contents of which are unknown, Daguerre said, "I have seized the light – I have arrested its flight!"

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The metal-based daguerreotype process soon had some competition from the paper-based calotype negative and salt print processes invented by Henry Fox Talbot. Subsequent innovations reduced the required camera exposure time from minutes to seconds and eventually to a small fraction of a second

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Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced photographic process, which required only minutes of exposure in the camera and produced clear, finely detailed results. It was commercially introduced in 1839, a date generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography.

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the first documented attempt was by Thomas Wedgewood in 1800, it was a complete failure

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this was taken in 1820s by  Nicéphore Niépce, but several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude