How were film negatives inverted for viewing before the rise of digital scanners?

Question

Or were some form of digital scanners always in use?

In: 4

Answer 1

Quite simply, they weren’t. Negatives were put between a light source and photographic paper. When exposed to light, and then chemically processed, areas of the paper that were exposed to light turned dark, while unexposed areas remained light. Intensity of the darkness depends on exposure time.

So a dark shadow in real-life, appears white (transparent) in the negative, but admits the passage of light which exposes the dark shadow in the final photograph.