History of Video Technology and Photography

1. History of Video Technology and Photography By Mary Claire Paddock

2. 5th - 4thcenturies B.C. The basic principles of optics and the camera are described by Chinese and Greek philosophers.

3. Ancient Times • Camera obscuras were used to form images on walls in darkened rooms; image formation via a pinhole.

4. 1664 • Isaac Newton discovers that white light is composed of different colors.

5. 1727 • Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light. This was the beginning to photographic technology that would be essential for movies.

6. 1822 • Joseph Niepce takes first, fixed photograph using a non-lense contact-printing heliographic process.

7. 1837 • Louis Dagurre took first image that was fixed, did not fade, and needed less than thirty minutes of light exposure.

8. 1839 • William Fox Talbot invents the positive/negative process widely used in modern photography. He refers to this a photogenic drawing.

9. 1861 • The first color photograph was taken by James Clerk Maxwell. The image is of a tartan ribbon.

10. 1878 • Edward Muybridge made a high-speed photographic demonstration of a moving horse, airborne during a trot, using a trip-wire system.

11. 1884 • George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film.

12. 1888 Kodak n1 box camera is mass marketed as the first easy to use camera.

13. 1891 • Thomas Edison patents the kinetoscopic camera (motion pictures).

14. 1900 • The Kodak Brownie.

15. 1913 • First 35mm still camera is developed.

16. 1914 • The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, the first dramatic feature film in color is released.

17. 1923 • Doc Harold Edgerton invents the xenon flash lamp and strobe photography.

18. 1926 • Kodak introduces its 35 mm Motion Picture Duplicating Film for duplicate negatives. Previously, motion picture studios used a second camera alongside the primary camera to create a duplicate negative.

19. 1932 • The first full color movie, the cartoon Flowers and Trees, is made in Technicolor by Disney.

20. 1932 • First 8mm amateur motion picture film, cameras, and projectors are introduced by Kodak.

21. 1939 • The View-Master stereo viewer is introduced.

22. 1942 • Chester Carson received a patent for electric photography, xerography.

23. 1948 • Edwin H. Land introduces the first Polaroid instant image camera.

24. 1952 • The 3-D film craze begins.

25. 1957 • First digital image produced on a computer by Russell Kirsch at U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

26. 1959 • AGFA introduces the first fully automatic camera, the Optima.

27. 1973 • Fairchild semiconductor releases the first large image forming CCD chip; 100 rows and 100 columns.

28. 1975 • Sony introduces the Betamax consumer VCR for $2,295.

29. 1976 • JVC introduces the VHS format for the VCR starting at $885.

30. 1980 • Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder, an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit.

31. 1984 • Cannon demonstrates first digital camera.

32. 1986 • Kodak scientists invent the world’s first megapixel sensor.

33. 1990 • Eastman Kodak announces the photo CD as a digital image storage medium.

34. 1996 • DVD-Video players start selling in Japan.

35. 2006 • Dalsa produces 111 megapixel CCD sensor, the highest resolution at its time.

36. 2006 • Digital photography steadily edged out the use of a film camera, so much that Polaroid announces it is discontinuing the production of all instant film products.

37. 2006 • The first HD DVD players are released in Japan for $934.

38. 2008 • The Blu-ray and HD DVD war is over, and Blu-ray is declared the winner. After Wal-Mart stores said they would no longer sell HD DVD players, Toshiba, the main backer of HD DVD high-definition disc technology, declared that the company would no longer continue to manufacture HD DVD players.