Camera Obscura

The camera obscura was invented to help artists draw

Camera obscura (meaning “dark room” in Latin) is a box-shaped device used as an aid for drawing or entertainment. Also referred to as a pinhole image, it lets light in through a small opening on one side and projects a reversed and inverted image on the other

It then led to those who were not so good at drawing looking into ways of keeping the scene permanently on a medium such as a tin plate or glass.

As a result of experiments by various people throughout the 18th & 19th centuries photography was born