THE HISTORY OF FILMProduced by Andy Gronow

1727- SILVER NITRATE CHANGES

• Johann Heinrich Schulz was a German scientist who discovered that Silver Nitrate changed colour when it was exposed to light. This lead to the making of the worlds first camera.

1814- THE CAMERA OBSCURA

The Obscura was used to take the first picture. It took hours to make a picture in the light and the pictures were not permanent, so they faded over time.

1837- THE DAGUERREOTYPE WAS INVENTED

• Louis Daguerre made the camera named after his surname.

• It was an improvement over past cameras as it was much quicker to make pictures and they were permanent, so they wouldn’t fade.

1841- MAKING MULTIPLE COPIES POSSIBLE • William Henry Talbot came

up with a way to make multiple copies of a single image.

1851- TAKING PICTURES GETS EASIER

• Using a special wet plate process, the collodion camera produced an image in seconds.

1871- FILM IS MADE EASIER TO HANDLE • Pictures could now be developed

at any time after taking them, rather than having to deal with them straight after taking them.

1888- THE ROLL-FILM CAMERA 

• George Eastman made the first roll-film camera. Around this time, the film industry began to come in.

1948- THE POLAROID CAMERA

• Pictures used to be developed in a dark room and with exposure to light for the image to appear. The Polaroid camera, however, allowed the image to be developed right away from inside the camera.

1963- DAWN OF COLOURED FILM

• Ever since the early 20th century, film had been in black & white, with the occasional cinematic film being made in Technicolor. However, in 1963, Polaroid released the first real colour camera, by the late 1960s, nearly all film was in colour.

1974- THE FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA

• The first digital camera was made by Sasson. Being digital made it lighter, more convenient and much higher quality.

1980- THE FIRST CONSUMER CAMCORDER

• Professional Camcorders were only used by big media companies for a long time. But Sony made the first consumer camcorder, so the general public could now record their own moments and make small scale entertainment.

1984- THE FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA IS MARKETED 

• The first digital camera available to the public was released in 1984 by Canon, improving camera quality for the general public.

1990- THE FIRST CAMERA PHONES• Cameras were now built into phones,

making travel and picture taking combined much more convenient as people did not always have to bring a camera with them.

• It started out in Japan, but went worldwide throughout the 90s.

2001- THE EASY SHARE CAMERA  

• Pictures could now be downloaded to a computer from the camera via a USB device and SD Card.

2012- WIRELESS CAMERAS

• Cameras now don’t even have to be plugged into a computer to download the pictures. They can be downloaded wirelessly and shared via social networks.