ELI5- How was the first camera invented?
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Around the 4th centry B.C. humans invented the _camera obscura_. They discovered that if you had a dark room and made a very small hole in the wall to the outside, the image of outside would project onto the walk of the darkened room (albeit upside down). In fact, the original definition of “camera” came from the latin meaning “chamber” or “room.” Many artists used this to paint lifelike portraits over the centuries, as they could “trace” over the projected image.
Seperatly, humans also discovered that some chemicals are photoreactive – they change color when exposted to light. In 1816, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce thought to put these two concepts together – he exposed a bitumen-coated plate to the projection from a camera obscura. Thus the first ever photograph was taken.
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