Editing Photography (section)

=== Precursor technologies ===
[[File:Camera obscura box.jpg|thumb|A camera obscura used for drawing]]
Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries relating to seeing an image and capturing the image. The discovery of the [[camera obscura]] ("dark chamber" in [[Latin]]) that provides an image of a scene dates back to [[History of Science and Technology in China|ancient China]]. Greek mathematicians [[Aristotle]] and [[Euclid]] independently described a camera obscura in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.<ref>Campbell, Jan (2005) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=lOEqvkmSxhsC&pg=PA114 Film and cinema spectatorship: melodrama and mimesis] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429011743/https://books.google.com/books?id=lOEqvkmSxhsC&pg=PA114 |date=29 April 2016}}''. Polity. p. 114. {{ISBN|0-7456-2930-X}}</ref><ref name="Krebs">{{Cite book
| title     = Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
| author    = Krebs, Robert E.
| publisher = Greenwood Publishing Group
| year      = 2004
| isbn      = 978-0-313-32433-8
| url       = https://books.google.com/books?id=MTXdplfiz-cC&pg=PA20
| page      = 20
}}</ref> In the 6th century CE, Byzantine mathematician [[Anthemius of Tralles]] used a type of camera obscura in his experiments.<ref>[[Alistair Cameron Crombie|Crombie, Alistair Cameron]] (1990) ''Science, optics, and music in medieval and early modern thought''. A&C Black. p. 205. {{ISBN|978-0-907628-79-8}}</ref>

The [[Physics in the medieval Islamic world|Arab physicist]] [[Ibn al-Haytham]] (Alhazen) (965–1040) also invented a camera obscura as well as the first true [[pinhole camera]].<ref name="Krebs" /><ref>{{Cite journal
| author1 = Wade, Nicholas J.
| author2 = Finger, Stanley
| year    = 2001
| title   = The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective
| journal = Perception
| volume  = 30
| issue   = 10
| pages   = 1157–77
| doi     = 10.1068/p3210
| pmid    = 11721819
| s2cid = 8185797
| issn=0301-0066}}</ref><ref name="Plott">{{cite book
| url   = https://books.google.com/books?id=ErMRGiNcxJIC&pg=PA460
| title = Global History of Philosophy: The Period of scholasticism (part one)
| last  = Plott
| first = John C.
| year  = 1984
| isbn  = 978-0-89581-678-8
| page  = 460
| publisher = Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
| quote = According to Nazir Ahmed if only Ibn-Haitham's fellow-workers and students had been as alert as he, they might even have invented the art of photography since al-Haitham's experiments with convex and concave mirrors and his invention of the "pinhole camera" whereby the inverted image of a candle-flame is projected were among his many successes in experimentation. One might likewise almost claim that he had anticipated much that the nineteenth century Fechner did in experimentation with after-images.
}}</ref> The invention of the camera has been traced back to the work of Ibn al-Haytham.<ref name="Belbachir">{{cite book
| last1     = Belbachir
| first1    = Ahmed Nabil
| title     = Smart Cameras
| date      = 2009
| publisher = Springer Science & Business Media
| isbn      = 978-1-4419-0953-4
| url       = https://books.google.com/books?id=it5W3f7yqAgC&pg=PR5
| quote     = The invention of the camera can be traced back to the 10th century when the Arab scientist Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham alias ''Alhacen'' provided the first clear description and correct analysis of the (human) vision process. Although the effects of single light passing through the pinhole have already been described by the Chinese Mozi (Lat. Micius) (5th century B), the Greek Aristotle (4th century BC), and the Arab
}}</ref> While the effects of a single light passing through a pinhole had been described earlier,<ref name="Belbachir" /> Ibn al-Haytham gave the first correct analysis of the camera obscura,<ref>{{Citation
| last1    = Wade
| first1   = Nicholas J.
| title   = The eye as an optical instrument: from camera obscura to Helmholtz's perspective
| date    = 2001
| last2   = Finger
| first2  = Stanley
| journal = Perception
| volume  = 30
| issue   = 10
| pages   = 1157–1177
| doi     = 10.1068/p3210
| pmid    = 11721819
| s2cid = 8185797
| quote   = The principles of the camera obscura first began to be correctly analysed in the eleventh century, when they were outlined by Ibn al-Haytham.
}}</ref> including the first geometrical and quantitative descriptions of the phenomenon,<ref>{{cite book
 |url          = https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_4-1_Physics_and_Physical_Technology_Physics.pdf
 |title        = Science and Civilization in China, vol. IV, part 1: Physics and Physical Technology
 |last         = Needham
 |first        = Joseph
 |access-date  = 5 September 2016
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20170703010030/http://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_4-1_Physics_and_Physical_Technology_Physics.pdf
 |archive-date = 3 July 2017
 |url-status   = dead
 |page         = 98
 |quote        = Alhazen used the camera obscura particularly for observing solar eclipses, as indeed Aristotle is said to have done, and it seems that, like Shen Kua, he had predecessors in its study, since he did not claim it as any new finding of his own. But his treatment of it was competently geometrical and quantitative for the first time.
}}</ref> and was the first to use a screen in a dark room so that an image from one side of a hole in the surface could be projected onto a screen on the other side.<ref>{{cite web
| title   = Who Invented Camera Obscura?
| url     = http://www.photographyhistoryfacts.com/photography-development-history/camera-obscura-history/
| website = Photography History Facts
| quote   = All these scientists experimented with a small hole and light but none of them suggested that a screen is used so an image from one side of a hole in surface could be projected at the screen on the other. First one to do so was Alhazen (also known as Ibn al-Haytham) in 11th century.
}}</ref> He also first understood the relationship between the [[Focus (optics)|focal point]] and the pinhole,<ref>{{cite book
 |url          = https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_4-1_Physics_and_Physical_Technology_Physics.pdf
 |title        = Science and Civilization in China, vol. IV, part 1: Physics and Physical Technology
 |last         = Needham
 |first        = Joseph
 |access-date  = 5 September 2016
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20170703010030/http://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Needham_Joseph_Science_and_Civilisation_in_China_Vol_4-1_Physics_and_Physical_Technology_Physics.pdf
 |archive-date = 3 July 2017
 |url-status   = dead
 |page         = 99
 |quote        = The genius of Shen Kua's insight into the relation of focal point and pinhole can better be appreciated when we read in Singer that this was first understood in Europe by Leonardo da Vinci (+ 1452 to + 1519), almost five hundred years later. A diagram showing the relation occurs in the Codice Atlantico, Leonardo thought that the lens of the eye reversed the pinhole effect, so that the image did not appear inverted on the retina; though in fact it does. Actually, the analogy of focal-point and pin-point must have been understood by Ibn al-Haitham, who died just about the time when Shen Kua was born.
}}</ref> and performed early experiments with [[afterimage]]s, laying the foundations for the invention of photography in the 19th century.<ref name="Plott" />

[[Leonardo da Vinci]] mentions natural camerae obscurae that are formed by dark caves on the edge of a sunlit valley. A hole in the cave wall will act as a pinhole camera and project a laterally reversed, upside down image on a piece of paper. [[Renaissance]] painters used the camera obscura which, in fact, gives the optical rendering in color that dominates Western Art. It is a box with a small hole in one side, which allows specific light rays to enter, projecting an inverted image onto a viewing screen or paper.

The birth of photography was then concerned with inventing means to capture and keep the image produced by the camera obscura. [[Albertus Magnus]] (1193–1280) discovered [[silver nitrate]],<ref>{{cite web
| last        = Davidson
| first       = Michael W
| publisher   = National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at The Florida State University
| website     = Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You
| title       = Albertus Magnus
| date        = 13 November 2015
| url         = http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/magnus.html
| url-status  = live
| archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20151222121436/http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/magnus.html
| archive-date = 22 December 2015
}}</ref> and [[Georg Fabricius]] (1516–1571) discovered [[silver chloride]],<ref>Potonniée, Georges (1973). ''The history of the discovery of photography''. Arno Press. p. 50. {{ISBN|0-405-04929-3}}</ref> and the techniques described in [[Ibn al-Haytham]]'s [[Book of Optics]] are capable of producing primitive photographs using medieval materials.{{citation needed|date=April 2023}}

[[Daniele Barbaro]] described a [[Diaphragm (optics)|diaphragm]] in 1566.<ref name="Gernsheim">[[Helmut Gernsheim|Gernsheim, Helmut]] (1986). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GDSRJQ3BZ5EC&pg=PA3 A concise history of photography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429080916/https://books.google.com/books?id=GDSRJQ3BZ5EC&pg=PA3 |date=29 April 2016}}''. Courier Dover Publications. pp. 3–4. {{ISBN|0-486-25128-4}}</ref> [[Wilhelm Homberg]] described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694.<ref>Gernsheim, Helmut and Gernsheim, Alison (1955) ''The history of photography from the earliest use of the camera obscura in the eleventh century up to 1914''. [[Oxford University Press]]. p. 20.</ref> Around 1717, [[Johann Heinrich Schulze]] used a light-sensitive slurry to capture images of cut-out letters on a bottle and on that basis many German sources and some international ones credit Schulze as the inventor of photography.<ref name="Watt2003">{{cite book|author=Susan Watt|title=Silver|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TYPyWkuRJqYC&pg=PA21|accessdate=28 July 2013|year=2003|publisher=Marshall Cavendish|isbn=978-0-7614-1464-3|pages=21–|quote=... But the first person to use this property to produce a photographic image was German physicist Johann Heinrich Schulze. In 1727, Schulze made a paste of silver nitrate and chalk, placed the mixture in a glass bottle, and wrapped the bottle in ...}}</ref><ref>Litchfield, Richard Buckley (1903). ''Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer'', etc., London, Duckworth and Co. Out of copyright and [https://archive.org/details/tomwedgwoodfirst00litcrich available free at archive.org]. In Appendix A (pp. 217–227), Litchfield evaluates assertions that Schulze's experiments should be called photography and includes a complete English translation (from the original Latin) of Schulze's 1719 account of them as reprinted in 1727.</ref>
The fiction book ''[[Giphantie]]'', published in 1760, by French author [[Tiphaigne de la Roche]], described what can be interpreted as photography.<ref name="Gernsheim" />

In June 1802, [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]] inventor [[Thomas Wedgwood (photographer)|Thomas Wedgwood]] made the first known attempt to capture the image in a camera obscura by means of a light-sensitive substance.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Werge |first=John |date=December 1, 1894 |title=The Oldest Photograph |pages=10 |work=The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-newcastle-weekly-chronicle/127710631/}}</ref> He used paper or white leather treated with [[silver nitrate]]. Although he succeeded in capturing the shadows of objects placed on the surface in direct sunlight, and even made shadow copies of paintings on glass, it was reported in 1802 that "the images formed by means of a camera obscura have been found too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver." The shadow images eventually darkened all over.<ref>Litchfield, R. 1903. "Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer: An Account of His Life." London, Duckworth and Co. See Chapter XIII. Includes the complete text of Humphry Davy's 1802 paper, which is the only known contemporary record of Wedgwood's experiments. (Retrieved 7 May 2013 [https://archive.org/details/tomwedgwoodfirst00litcrich via archive.org] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151007125801/https://archive.org/details/tomwedgwoodfirst00litcrich |date=7 October 2015}}).</ref>