Who invented camera?

Johann Zahn designed the first camera in 1685. But the first photograph was clicked by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in the year 1814. It was thousands of years back that an Iraqi scientist Ibn- al- Haytham made a mention of this kind of a device in his book, Book of Optics in 1021. The earlier cameras were incapable of saving the images and were huge in size. The first practical photography was invented by Louis Daquerre in 1829 but he took almost 10 years to produce the effective method which was named after him as daquerreotype. All this was done in Niepce’s partnership. The process of obtaining a picture on a silver- coated copper sheet was mentioned in a booklet. Louis and Niepce’s son sold the rights of the process to the French government and soon there were number of daquerreotype studios working.

Many people then worked on improving the technology. In 1841, Henry Fox Tablot invented calotype; the process of getting number of positives from a single negative. Hamilton Smith got patent for tintypes in 1856. The year 1851 witnessed the development of wet plate negatives by Frederick Scoff Archer followed by the invention of dry plate negatives in 1879. George Eastman invented the flexible film roll in 1889. The color photography at commercial level started in the year 1940. This was the beginning of comfortable photography with a handy camera.