The technology which led to the invention of photography essentially combines two distinct sciences: optics – the convergence of light rays to form an image inside a camera – and chemistry, to enable that image to be captured and recorded permanently onto a photosensitive (light-sensitive) surface.Īlready during the Renaissance (several centuries earlier) artists had begun to use a sort of primitive “camera” called a camera obscura (a latin term meaning literally “dark room” from which is derived our modern word “camera”) to more accurately copy nature by means of drawing. The word was supposedly first coined by the British scientist Sir John Herschel in 1839 from the Greek words phos, (genitive: phōtós) meaning “light”, and graphê meaning “drawing or writing”. The word “photography” literally means “drawing with light”. In the period between the two Napoleons experiments were underway both in France and in England, and by the time Napoleon’s nephew Louis-Napoleon became Emperor of France in 1852, photography was creating its own small revolution. Photography is so omnipresent today -whether in science, advertising, current events media, propaganda, or just our own snaps – it is hard to imagine a world without it.
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