History of the pinhole camera

The first pinhole ‘camera’ dates back to 1544. The first camera was actually a room, a dark, dark room used by Gemma Frisius, to view the solar eclipse. This was the first use of any form of pinhole camera.

Alhazen lived in the Middle Ages; he invented the first pinhole camera, and discovered why the camera projects photographs upside down. The pinhole camera is also knows as ‘camera obscurer’.

Although Alhazen invented the first pinhole camera it was Joseph Nicephore Niepce who took the first photographic image on the pinhole camera. Before Niepce, the camera obscurer was only used for drawing and viewing purposes.

Louis Daquerre also experimented with trying to reduce exposure time and the wonders of photography. He was the inventor of the first practical process of photography. In 1829 Joseph Niepce and Louis Daquerre formed a partnership to improve the process of photography that Niepce had already started to develop.

As I said before the pin hole camera dates back to the Middle Ages, with cameras of all shapes and sizes slowly developing more and more into the modern cameras we see today. Although cameras are developing more and more, each one is still based around the production and research gone into inventions of the pinhole camera.