The oldest heliographic engraving in the world

Photo: The first known surviving heliographic engraving in the world, made by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1825 by contact under an engraving with the heliographic process.

Niepce’s seminal work was a step towards the first permanent photography taken with a camera obscura, an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is a reproduction of a 17th century Flemish engraving, showing a man leading a horse. The Bibliothèque nationale de France bought it for euro 450,000 € in 2002, deeming it as a national treasure.

Photography evolved as a result of studies and scientific inventions over many centuries. Long before the first photographs were shot, Chinese philosopher Mo Di described a pinhole camera in 5th century BCE. Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040) studied the camera obscura and pinhole camera, Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) invented silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516-1571) invented silver chloride. Daniel Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg explained photochemical effect, i.e., how light darkened some chemicals, in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie (1760) by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche described what can be interpreted as photography.

The first permanent photo-etching was an image produced in 1822 by Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed by an attempt to duplicate it. However, Niépce was successful to produce another etching again in 1825 (see photo). He made the first permanent photograph with a camera obscura in 1826. His photographs took as long as 8 hours to expose. So, to find a new process, he worked with Louis Daguerre and they experimented with silver compounds, based on the discovery by Johann Heinrich Schultz in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.

Though Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued the work and developed the daguerreotype in 1837, and took the first ever photo of a person in 1839 when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure of several minutes. Later, France agreed to pay Daguerre a pension for his formula in exchange for his promise to announce his discovery to the world as the gift of France which he did in 1839.

Wootton bridge collapse and forensic photography

The camera has a long history as a means of recording phenomena from the first use by Daguerre and Fox-Talbot, such as astronomical events, eclipses for example, small creatures and plants when the camera was attached to the eyepiece of microscopes (photo-microscopy) and for macro photography of larger specimens. The camera also proved useful in recording crime scenes and the scenes of accidents such as the Wootton bridge collapse on 11 June 1861. The rail bridge at Wootton collapsed under the weight of a passing goods train on the line between Leamington Spa and Kenilworth owned by the London and North Western Railway Company.

For the first time, under the orders of the courts, photos were taken to record the scene using both long distance shots and close-ups of the debris. The photographs were used in courts of inquiry, and the technique is now commonplace in courts of law. Then photographs were made on a large plate camera with a small aperture and using fine grain emulsion film on a glass plate. When the positive prints are scanned at high resolution, they can be enlarged to show details of the components. The methods used in analyzing old photographs are collectively known as forensic photography.

Canon Digital Camera IXUS

The Digital IXUS (IXY Digital in Japan and PowerShot Digital ELPH in US and Canada) is a series of ultra-compact digital cameras released by Canon. The first Digital IXUS released in June 2000 fitted the technology of the PowerShot S10 into a body similar to the APS IXUS II. Between 2003 and 2004, starting with the Digital IXUS II, Canon moved from the use of CF cards to SD cards to create thinner cameras.

Canon's PowerShot A and S line of the time were being made as small as contemporary technology allowed. Canon used its experience with small film cameras, particularly the APS IXUS, to mass-produce good digital cameras smaller than anyone else had managed up to the time.