The first camera needed an incredibly long exposure

The first camera needed an incredibly long exposure

The first photograph ever taken in 1826 took 8 hours to expose!

The creator of that camera, Louis Daguerre, was able to lower that time drastically to just 15 minutes in 1839.

The history of cameras is not defined by slow-moving evolution. Rather, it was a series of world-changing discoveries and inventions followed by the rest of the world catching up. The first camera to take a permanent photograph was invented a hundred years before the portable camera was available to the middle class. A hundred years after that, the camera has become a part of daily life.

Today’s camera is a small, digital addition to the incredible computer that is our smartphone. For the professional, it may be the digital SLR, capable of taking high-definition video or thousands of high-resolution photos. For the nostalgic, it might be a take on the instant cameras of yesteryear. Each of these represent a single leap forward in camera technology.