Pinhole Camera - Invention of Pinhole Camera

Invention of Pinhole Camera

The 10th-century scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote about naturally-occurring rudimentary pinhole cameras. For example, light may travel through the slits of wicker baskets or the crossing of tree leaves. (The circular dapples on a forest floor, actually pinhole images of the sun, can be seen to have a bite taken out of them during partial solar eclipses opposite to the position of the moon's actual occultation of the sun because of the inverting effect of pinhole lenses.)

Alhazen published this idea in the Book of Optics in 1021 AD. He improved on the camera after realizing that the smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image (though the less light). He provides the first clear description for construction of a camera obscura (Lat. dark chamber).

In the 5th century BC, the Mohist philosopher Mo Jing (墨經) in ancient China mentioned the effect of an inverted image forming through a pinhole. The image of an inverted Chinese pagoda is mentioned in Duan Chengshi's (d. 863) book Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Along with experimenting with the pinhole camera and the burning mirror of the ancient Mohists, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) experimented with camera obscura and was the first to establish geometrical and quantitative attributes for it.

In the 13th century AD, Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon commented on the pinhole camera. Between 1000 and 1600, men such as Ibn al-Haytham, Gemma Frisius, and Giambattista della Porta wrote on the pinhole camera, explaining why the images are upside down.

Around 1600 AD, Giambattista della Porta added a lens to the pinhole camera. It was not until 1850 AD that a Scottish scientist by the name of Sir David Brewster actually took the first photograph with a pinhole camera. Up until recently it was believed that Brewster himself coined the term "Pinhole" in "The Stereoscope". The earliest reference to the term "Pinhole" has been traced back to almost a century before Brewster to James Ferguson's Lectures on select Subjects. Sir William Crookes and William de Wiveleslie Abney were other early photographers to try the pinhole technique.