Who developed the camera?

Answer 1

I'm presuming you mean photographic camera and not the camera obscura.

It is not really a question that can be definitively answered as written. The earliest uncovered evidence of lens making dates back several centuries (from Persia, I believe), while the principle of the camera obscura (co hereinafter) dates back to about 300 B.C. The first device constructed to employ the principles was built around 1021 A.D, yet it was not even given this name until 1604. I think the earliest known reference to adding a lens to the co was written around 1568 (Daniele Barbaro), and Johann Zahn constructed a co small enough to be easily portable about 1679 to 1685, depending on what reference you cite. I do not know if he designed the lens that made this possible or simply incorporated one into his design. Therefore, this forerunner of the portable photographic camera was in existence about 150 years before the "invention" of Photography. From this it is evident that the co with its lens predates the concept of photography by a long shot.

Therefore, the device used in 1826 to make the first permanent photographic image employed chemical and optical knowledge that predated it by many centuries. Perhaps it is more a question of how the lens and the camera obscura were adapted to suit the purpose of making photographs. Photography itself is a progession and adaptation of technology rather than some sort of eureka moment.

To put this in another context, we probably would not have the automobile if someone had not thought to hitch a horse to a wheeled contraption. Maybe this was the Romans, but that's another topic and I think you will get the point.

Answer 2

History of the camera From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The first permanent photograph was made in 1826 or 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris. Niépce built on a discovery by Johann Heinrich Schultz (1724): a silver and chalk mixture darkens under exposure to light. While this was the introduction of photography, the history of the camera itself can be traced back much further. Photographic cameras were a development of the camera obscura, a device dating back to the Iraqi scientist Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th century,[1] which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene outside onto a viewing surface. Before the invention of photographic lapel processes, there was no way to preserve the images produced by these cameras apart from manually tracing them. The earliest cameras were room-sized, with space for one or more people inside; these gradually evolved into more and more compact models such that by Niépce's time portable handheld cameras suitable for photography were readily available. In fact, the first camera obscura that was compact enough to be practical for photography was built by Johann Zahn in 1685, almost 150 years before photographic technology caught up to the point where such an application was possible.

Answer 3

An Arab physicist, Ibn al-Haytham, published his Book of Optics in 1021 AD. He was known for finding the first 'camera' called a Camera Obscura, even though its not an actual camera. It was just the study of seeing that if you have say a room or a box, with one whole on the opposite wall, the image that is outside will be taken and flipped to that it shows upside down on the opposite wall. This is was led up to photography and the creation of the Pinhole camera which Ibn al-Haytham is also credited for.

Answer 4

Nicéphore Niépce invented the process around 1826.