The Discovery of Photography

cliveh · Feb 24, 2021

Is it not more feasible for photographic discovery to emerge from one area of science rather than a combination? Film photography is a marriage of chemistry and physics, but digital photography is a product of physics. If photography had not been discovered in the 19th century and the first type of photography was digital at a later date, when technology allowed. Then what if? At a later date, a version of photography employing both physics and chemistry was discovered? Would it have more or less relevance? I ask the question as technological advancement may not always be chronological in order and would be interested on the thoughts of others about this question.

Sirius Glass · Feb 24, 2021

I do not understand where you are going with this. To start with digital photography is an outgrowth to the aerospace industry based on electro-optics using chip building technology.

ChristopherCoy · Feb 24, 2021

Yeah, we're gonna need WAY more weed to get this deep into things...

Darkroom317 · Feb 24, 2021

Are you familiar with Geoffrey Batchen's book Burning With Desire? Batchen posits that most of the technology and chemistry for photography was known relatively earlier than its invention. However, there was no need to put it together yet. According to him one of the largest factors for photography's inventjon was the desire for reproduceable realistic images. Photography was a result of the needs of the industrial revolution. Not sure it quite fits with your question about if digital came first. However, it important to think abut the overall cultural landscape at the time of invention.

Ko.Fe. · Feb 24, 2021

I'm puzzled. Is glass formula on top of the sensors just physics? How about inks and matching papers?

urnem57 · Feb 24, 2021

That’s probably true about all of the precursor chemicals already being known. To my knowledge, chemists created the formula and process. It didn’t become an art form until the painters of the day started playing with it. Many of them feared that it would cheaply and easily replace them. I am still stunned at how guys in the 40’s shot baseball with Speed Graphics and got “ball on the bat” shots. They had to be good. Take a look at the sports photographs from before roll film or even Grafmatics were around. These days it’s “give 100 monkeys a typewriter”

ChristopherCoy · Feb 24, 2021

urnem57 said:
To my knowledge, chemists created the formula and process. It didn’t become an art form until the painters of the day started playing with it.

Who said it was an art form?

urnem57 · Feb 24, 2021

I am using the term rather loosely.

cliveh · Feb 24, 2021

In answer to my own question, I think physics/chemical photography would have much greater relevance, as it relies far more on capture than manipulation and is therefore nearer to arresting reality rather than invention.

Sirius Glass · Feb 24, 2021

ChristopherCoy said:
Yeah, we're gonna need WAY more weed to get this deep into things...

WAY more. Bodacious quantities of truly righteous pot. Any recommendations, since it is legal in California now?

Nodda Duma · Feb 24, 2021

Sirius Glass said:
I do not understand where you are going with this. To start with digital photography is an outgrowth to the aerospace industry based on electro-optics using chip building technology.

Yep. It traces back through infrared detection and even further back to photomultiplier tubes. PMT’s rely on the photoelectric effect and secondary emission... discoveries of the late 19th Century. Going further back, mid-19th Century discoveries of the photovoltaic effect and photoconductivity were key cornerstones.

If the 19th Century was the century of discovery, then the 20th Century was the era of technological exploitation...where the earlier discoveries were put to practical use for the betterment of mankind. It’s absolutely fascinating how science played out. In this way, those two centuries will forever hold a special place in human history.

Darkroom317 · Feb 24, 2021

ChristopherCoy said:
Who said it was an art form?

Quite a bit of the art, art education and art history communities at this point.

Nicholas Lindan · Feb 24, 2021

I don't see how you are going to have digital photography without chemical photography being well perfected first. Semiconductor manufacturing is all about photolithography. I suppose, given the lack of solid state electronics, you could make an 'electronic camera' by cobbling together a Logie Baird scanning mechanical television with a fax printer but I don't think it could be called 'photography.' And how such a Heath Robinson invention could be used to manufacture semiconductors is beyond me.

Technology develops in progressive evolutionary steps. It only goes one way.

Maris · Feb 24, 2021

If digital picture making had been discovered first it would not be called photography.
Perhaps some new term like "Robo-Painting" would be coined because the individual steps of producing (say) digital hard copy are exactly mirrored, one to one, with the individual steps of traditional easel painting.

removed account4 · Feb 24, 2021

cliveh said:
In answer to my own question, I think physics/chemical photography would have much greater relevance, as it relies far more on capture than manipulation and is therefore nearer to arresting reality rather than invention.

how does chemical based photography not manipulate reality ?
It may seem like a mirror to reality or memories but it’s none of these things. Photography whether a daguerreotype, calotype Kodachrome of iPhone snapshot is all the same thing a contorted version of what someone imagines reality to be and an invented memory...
if photography was not invented until the computer age nothing will have been different.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 24, 2021

If there was a need for chemical photography after digital photography was invented, then yes, someone would have developed it. So needs could be to create a different kind of print that only a chemical reaction would give like platinum or sepia. If someone wanted more details, they would have invented 8x10 negatives. Film can be used to store digital data instead of tapes, drums, or disks, etc. Just think of the problems film solves that would give you a reason for its development. Also, it's only lately that digital has grown in power. Earlier digital didn't solve many of the problems film would handle better. So if digital came first, then film could have quickly followed before digital became much better than it is now.

RalphLambrecht · Feb 25, 2021

cliveh said:
Is it not more feasible for photographic discovery to emerge from one area of science rather than a combination? Film photography is a marriage of chemistry and physics, but digital photography is a product of physics. If photography had not been discovered in the 19th century and the first type of photography was digital at a later date, when technology allowed. Then what if? At a later date, a version of photography employing both physics and chemistry was discovered? Would it have more or less relevance? I ask the question as technological advancement may not always be chronological in order and would be interested on the thoughts of others about this question.

film photography also was a marriage of chemistry and physics.chemistry had to wait for optics to become viable.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 25, 2021

RalphLambrecht said:
film photography also was a marriage of chemistry and physics.chemistry had to wait for optics to become viable.

But pinhole visualization (Camera obscura).was invented long before either and worked without optics.

MattKing · Feb 25, 2021

Alan Edward Klein said:
But pinhole visualization (Camera obscura).was invented long before either and worked without optics.

A pinhole makes use of optics. In fact, it is as pure an example of applied optics as you can find.

ChristopherCoy · Feb 25, 2021

Isn't this question kind of like asking what if the automobile was built before the wheel?

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 25, 2021

MattKing said:
A pinhole makes use of optics. In fact, it is as pure an example of applied optics as you can find.

You're right. I was thinking about lenses.

removed account4 · Feb 25, 2021

ChristopherCoy said:
Isn't this question kind of like asking what if the automobile was built before the wheel?

naaah. the question is like could Tesla have built their sedan if Porsche hadn't built the targa ...

cliveh · Feb 25, 2021

ChristopherCoy said:
Isn't this question kind of like asking what if the automobile was built before the wheel?

No, it's more akin to suggesting the electric car was built before the internal combustion engine was invented.

MattKing · Feb 25, 2021

Arguably, computer science is the science that digital photography is most reliant on.
Film photography provided the template that guided the development of the digital algorithms that do the work in digital photography.
If film photography hadn't come first, who knows what digital photography would have emulated.

ChristopherCoy · Feb 25, 2021

MattKing said:
If film photography hadn't come first, who knows what digital photography would have emulated.

Didn't it emulate painting before it emulated photography?

The Discovery of Photography

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