The whole concept of the
pinhole camera has a history from way back. The word "photography" comes from the Greek word photos, meaning light, and the word graphein, which in english is the verb to draw. Sir John F.W. Herschel, a scientist in 1839, was among the first people to have ever used the word.
An explanation of the actual process, the pinhole camera does, would be: the method of image recording by the action of the light or radiation that is related to a sensitive material.
One of the biggest authorities on what concerns optics from way back, the Middle Ages, around 1000AD, Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) was the first person to invent a pinhole camera, which was also named the Camera Obscura and he was also the first man to explain the reason why the images were in the upside down position.
Aristotle, who lived around 330 BC was the first man to have noted and observed a casual reference towards the optic laws that concerns the whole concept of the pinhole camera existence. He also was the first to have questioned why the sun makes a circular image even when it shines through a square hole.
A great part of the
pinhole camera history is Nicephore Niepce as well who on a day of summer in 1827 made one of the first photographic image using a camera obscura(pinhole camera). Before that people used it for drawing or viewing purposes, not to make photographs. Joseph Nicephore Niepce made heliographs, or so called sun prints, and these made the prototypes for the modern pinhole camera photograph.
Niepce was also the one to have engraved a metal plate which was coated in bitumen and then put it out into the light. The engraving had shadowy areas too which blocked the light but the areas that were whiter gave space to the light to react with the chemicals situated on that plate. After that, he placed the plate made of metal into a solvent and observed how an image which was not visible until then became visible.
His photograph, however, required about eight hours of exposure into the sun light and soon after the photograph became visible it slowly faded away. With small steps many other gradually contributed in building the pinhole camera history.
