The journey of Camera ......

The Camera as a device has been known to man well before the middle ages; the earliest known mention being by the Arab mathematician Ibn Al-Haytham who is credited as being the first person to have built a model closely resembling the pinhole camera. The principles of optics and physics (light) have been known even further back with mention of it being found in the Greek period by Aristotle.

Though, the camera which could actually produce a picture is credited to have been built by the Frenchmen Charles and Vincent Chevalier while the first photograph developed using this camera was by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1826. The prototype of the modern camera was invented by George Eastman (1884) when he built a model using paper based photographic film and named his invention as Kodak. Before this Photography involved complicated chemical processes involving glass plates and the development procedure was quite tedious. Eastman's invention led to the production of the camera on a mass scale and the Brownie; the first roll-film camera was born (1900) enabling even a layman to take photos.

Why the camera was invented? Perhaps because people like their pictures taken or to preserve their memories when they go on vacations and maybe because they like to watch movies; yes, the camera heralded the arrival of motion picture photography and it was the Lumiere brothers (1895) who are credited to be the pioneers in this field.