Lord Featheringstone of Stratford upon Sussex upon Avon, upon France, reporting from 1762.
I am here to warn you about a danger that is going to sweep the world in the next century.
Something called a Kam I Ra.
As we all know, having a portrait is a privilege reserved for us fancy schmancy rich people.
We pay tons of money for the privilege of immortalizing our powdered wigs and frilly shirts.
As we should, these looks will stay hot for all time.
But our sources say this camera will allow any old riffraff to take a picture and have their own portrait.
Travesty.
Our correspondent took to the streets to see how the public reacts.
Yes, my lord.
I'm here at the town market to consult with the common folk, many of whom aren't wearing buckled shoes or fine ruffled silk garments.
Here's what these fashion oh-no-no-no's are saying.
Ooh, I'd love to see my face without looking into a spoon.
I've been corresponding for quite some time with a lovely lady up in the North Country.
She thinks I'm quite tall and muscular and handsome.
So I'll stick with pen and paper, thank you.
Wait, it can make portraits of anything?
Forget me.
I want pictures of my dog and my lunch.
People would love to see that, right?
So there you have it.
This camera you speak of will be welcomed with open arms.
Dear, dear, if we let the masses have this technology, we'll be drowning in pictures of everyone we've ever met.
And the portrait artist will die starving.
Think of me fondly, the poor portrait artiste.
I'm Joy Dolo, and this is Forever Ago, the show where we start at the beginning.
And today we want to know, where do cameras come from?
And by we, I mean me and Elena.
Hey.
Hi, Elena.
How's it going?
I'm well.
Oh, good, good.
So cameras, what do you think about cameras?
Do you have one?
Yeah, I have it on my phone.
On your phone?
Do you use it a lot?
Yeah.
Well, that's kind of hard, because if I'm doing something with friends, I record it or take pictures.
So it depends.
So when you're using the camera, you usually use it with your friends.
Yeah, basically, but sometimes I take pictures just to take pictures.
Have you ever, like, taken a picture of your food or anything like that?
No, I don't do that.
I'm not that person.
You think that's weird?
Yeah, I think it's kind of weird.
It's like, it's food.
Just eat it.
Just eat it.
Yeah, nothing going on there.
What about with your family?
Oh, yeah, I take pictures with my family.
Yeah, like when you guys go on vacation?
Yeah.
So you use it a lot with your family, with your friends.
You don't take pictures of food because that's weird.
That's just weird.
So let's imagine that the world didn't have any cameras around.
Or I know, it's terrifying, right?
Yeah, it's terrifying.
How do you think that would change how you record things or how you look at things?
It would be kind of weird, because what if your friend moved out to California and then you couldn't take pictures?
Right.
Or you couldn't send them pictures or anything.
That would just be sad.
And you wouldn't be able to see them.
Yeah, you wouldn't see them.
Yeah, exactly.
You could maybe not even be able to recognize their face.
Yeah, if you didn't see them for a long time, you might even forget what they look like.
I think I take it for granted that I have a phone with me at all times and that I can see my pictures instantaneously.
But it wasn't that long ago that you had to buy a camera separate from your phone and you had to use film.
Have you ever used a camera that needed film?
My grandma had one of them, and once I was just messing around with it, so, yeah, once.
It's cool because you can take the picture right there, but you can't see it right away, right?
No, you can't see it.
Yeah.
Film seems so low-tech now, but at one point, it was exciting and new.
And someone had to invent it.
Or several someones.
Whoa!
Hey, Paulina.
Hi.
Hello.
Paulina Velasco is a reporter and we asked her here to investigate the camera and where it comes from.
Okay, so who invented the camera, Paulina?
Well, before we get to the who's, we should talk about the what.
What exactly is a camera?
Like, how would you describe it, Elena?
A camera is a device that records visual images such as photos, film, and videos.
You're like a walking Wikipedia page.
Ha ha ha!
I mean, yeah, that's totally correct.
We usually think of a camera as an instrument, right, that records images of the world around us.
Yeah.
But it actually all got started with something that just reflected an image and didn't actually record anything yet.
I'm talking about the camera obscura.
Can you guess what language that's in?
Camera obscura.
Spanish?
I'm going to guess French.
Close, but it's Latin.
Oh.
And it means dark room.
And that's what it is.
It's a dark box or a very dark room with a hole in the wall that lets the tiniest pinprick of light through.
And directly opposite the hole you'll see the image of whatever you're pointing this box or camera obscura at.
It's just upside down.
How old do you think the camera obscura is?
What's your best guess?
200 years old?
I'm going to say 16,000 years old.
I mean, it's a pinprick of a light going through this big box.
That sounds like...
Not like caveman-ish, but it sounds like it was a long time ago.
That is like caveman.
Yeah.
It's like dinosaurs.
Well, no one knows exactly how old the camera obscura is, but we do know that it's over 2000 years old.
Because that's when Chinese philosopher Mo Zi wrote the earliest known description of it.
And not long after that, the Greek philosopher Aristotle used it to look at a solar eclipse.
No more sunburnt eyes.
I love this thing.
Eventually, painters use it to trace things and create more realistic paintings.
Nonsense!
I painted this, uh, completely freehand.
And astronomers used it, too, to reflect the night sky onto a piece of paper.
Little dipper, you won't escape my meticulous measurements ever again!
The camera obscura was probably the first tool we had to see the world as it is through a sort of lens and not just our regular old eyes.
We could point the lens in a specific direction, like that star, this flower, that fancy lady sitting for her portrait.
And so we start isolating pockets of the world to better study them.
Do you think the camera obscura should be considered the first camera?
I mean, it has camera in the name.
Well, I think it should be because, I mean, like, where did we get the name camera from?
Right.
And I mean, the idea is it's a box that you can see images through.
Yeah.
You just can't, like, take it with you.
So it seems like a camera in a way.
Well, let's skip ahead to the 1800s.
The Industrial Revolution is in full swing in Europe.
Lots of people are moving from the countryside, where they grew their own food and handmade their own clothes, to cities where they work in factories and buy things from stores.
And in a land called La France, there was a man named, wait for it, Louis-Jacques-Monday Daguerre.
Ooh, la la.
Yes, ma'am.
And Daguerre and his partner Joseph Nicephore Niepce, figured out how to record the images projected by a camera obscura.
So first, they coated a polished metal plate with chemicals that reacted to light.
Then they put the plate inside a camera obscura so that the upside-down image projected right onto it.
And the parts of the plate touched by light undergo a chemical reaction.
And then, with the help of a few more chemicals, you get an image.
Voila!
Oh!
Cool.
Daguerre kept working after Niepce died.
He made more improvements and eventually named the invention after himself.
He called it the Daguerreotype.
Can you imagine how people might have used this new technology?
Yeah, it's kind of like so if you had this image of a flower or like the things we were talking about before, you would have it on this plate.
A metal plate?
That's kind of weird, but good at the same time.
Yeah, but you can bring it with you.
So it's like you have it.
Yeah, you can bring it with you.
Like put it in your backpack.
Oh, let me just show you my metal plate here.
This is my mother.
This metal plate is also my dog.
Yeah, people loved the idea of taking pictures.
Bienvenue to my photography studio.
They took pictures of themselves.
And family and friends.
Even their pets.
Early daguerreotypes show people wearing top hats and ruffles in their shirts.
Some of the women wear corsets.
Suddenly, like we said, people could carry pictures of their loved ones with them.
You could feel closer to family when you were far away.
Can you guys imagine other ways people might have used daguerreotypes?
I imagine that they used it to take pictures of food.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I think it's honestly a weird thing to take pictures of food, but go ahead.
Be wild.
Be free.
Maybe even for, like, advertising.
Oh, yeah, advertising.
You know, like you used to like, there's this shirt that's over in this store and it's over here, and this is what it looks like.
Show people those ruffles.
Yeah, show off those ruffles.
Oh, yeah.
And also, when you think about it, it's sort of the first time that journalists could capture images.
Yeah.
They did that in the Mexican-American War, and their photos allowed people to see how horrible war was, even if they were far from the front lines.
Now, daguerreotypes were expensive and hard to use, but that would change in 1877, when the next big camera innovator came along.
Oh, sorry.
Actually, he just texted.
He's running a little late.
Oh, goodness.
Come on.
Well, I guess while we wait, how about a game of first things first, Elena?
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
So we have a list of three things, and we'll try to guess the order they first appeared in history.
Like which came first, bicycles or tricycles?
Exactly, Elena.
Do you want to read today's three things?
Sure.
Here they are.
Selfies, Insta cameras like a Polaroid, and photobombs.
Do you know what a photobomb is?
Yeah, it's when someone's trying to take a picture, and then you come out of nowhere.
And barge in their picture.
And you barge into their picture, exactly.
Yeah, you just, yeah.
So if you're thinking about the order of history that all of this stuff came in, what do you think came first?
What do you think is the oldest one?
The instant cameras, like a Polaroid.
Yeah, the instant cameras.
Do you know the Polaroid?
Do you know what that is?
Not really.
They were really popular when I was young.
Have you ever seen those big blocks?
Oh, like the block ones?
Yep, and then it like spits it out like a tongue and then you shake it.
Yeah, yeah.
So you think your first guess would be instant cameras and then selfies or photobombs?
What do you think?
I feel like they came up around the same time.
Maybe photobombs first.
Photobombs?
Yeah, because you have the picture, you can photobomb it, and then finally they got to selfies.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
I think I would go down that road too.
A Polaroid instant camera.
First with the picture you can do a photobomb, and then following, that is a selfie.
Or maybe, yeah, you can maybe even do the photobomb before the instant cameras.
That's true, with a daguerreotype, a daguerreotype bomb.
A daguerreotype bomb.
All right, well, don't go anywhere.
We'll reveal the answers after the break.
Forever Ago will be right back.
Did you know that people have been using cameras to spy for almost a hundred years?
I'm sick and tired of tracing these copies of top secret documents by hand.
They don't pay me enough for this.
The Meenox camera was invented in 1936.
Ooh.
Wow.
I'll take 12.
That is a gadget.
It could fit in the palm of your hand and could easily be hidden inside things like a hollowed out hairbrush.
Just gonna lean over these classified maps while I casually brush my hair.
Nothing weird going on here at all.
As camera technology improved, engineers were able to create smaller cameras.
And, you better believe it, the spy cameras got even craftier.
Nothing to see here, fellas.
Just checking my completely normal wristwatch like a normal person who's not also a handsome daring super spy?
What camera?
This is just a regular old teddy bear.
I take this little guy with me everywhere.
Throughout history, cameras have been disguised to look like briefcases lighters buttons, you name it.
The CIA even developed a camera for pigeons to wear. so they could conduct aerial reconnaissance.
Luckily for our feathered friends, this pigeon espionage program has since been abandoned, as far as we know.
I'm Joy Dolo, and this is Forever Ago, the show where we go way, way, way, way, way back.
Before we hear about the next big camera invention, it's time to finish First Things.
First the game where we put things in order.
Here's the envelope with the answers, Joy.
Oh, this is such a big moment.
Here we go.
We could see what actually happened.
Oh, my goodness.
So the oldest thing was the selfie.
What?
Yeah.
In 1839 was the first selfie taken.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
A guy named Robert Cornelius took a daguerreotype of himself.
Really?
And that was an 1839 selfie.
Oh, hey.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So he had his own selfie on that little metal plate.
Whoa.
But we were right about the middle.
Photobomb.
The photobomb was the second one.
It was a picture taken by Welsh photographer Mary Dillwyn.
And we actually have a picture here.
Do you want to check it out?
Oh, I see the face.
That's hilarious.
What do you see there?
So it's two women sitting down getting their picture taken.
And then this guy, his head is coming from out of nowhere.
He's like jumping in the photo.
He's like... Stealth.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that was the second one, the 1853 photo bomb.
And then last but not least, the instant camera.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, thanks very much for playing.
That was fun, huh?
Yeah, it was.
All right.
Before the break Paulina, you mentioned some kind of a big shot camera adventure.
That was running a little late.
Oh, yeah.
Joy, Elena, meet George Eastman.
How do you do?
Hello, George.
Apologies for the tardiness.
Confounded parallel parking.
Back in Georgia's day in the late 1800s, things were pretty low-tech.
No one had cars yet.
Oh, no.
None of these newfangled horseless carriages.
We had to use a carriage and a horse, and let me tell you, it was not always romantic.
Horses poop a lot.
Ew.
Okay.
Gross.
So when George was 23 years old, he was planning a business trip to the Dominican Republic where he wanted to buy real estate.
I'll let Kathy Connor from the George Eastman Museum explain what happened next.
And that meant either buying a camera which he did not own and most people did not own, or bringing an artist with you who could draw the property and sign his name to it, so it would prove that it really existed.
So George decided to buy a camera for $100, which would be almost $2,000 now.
Oh, wow.
That's a lot of money, huh?
Yeah, for a camera.
And the camera was about the size of a microwave today.
And he had to buy a tripod, a big, huge stand to put it on so it wouldn't move.
And he had to buy a tent and all the chemistry he would need to be able to process his own pictures.
Yes, it was so complicated.
George actually had to take lessons before he could use it.
So for the camera, it wasn't like, point the camera, snap a pic, save it, done.
You had to set up a tent, and then inside the tent you had this big piece of glass.
You also had to have something to rest this giant camera on, and a bunch of chemicals.
Oh my god.
It's a lot more work than it is now, huh?
Yeah, it's like huge.
Blech, don't even get me started with those stinky chemicals.
I had to mix them and spread them out on the glass, all in the dark.
Confound it.
Uh, well, let him clean up a little.
You had to do all this complicated stuff in the dark because direct sunlight would make the whole plate turn dark and ruin your picture.
So you'd have to take this big piece of glass, cover it up to the camera which is outside, take a picture, run back into the dark, tent with it.
It was a very complicated, messy, wet process.
And Eastman complained many times how...
He hated it.
He poured chemicals when he was traveling on trips on his underwear, on his clothes.
He ruined a lot of things because you have to throw everything out if it got the chemicals on it.
So George decided there must be a better way.
I sure did.
Cancel my tickets.
Scrap the trip.
Someone needs to show the camera who's boss.
He shut himself in his mother's kitchen to figure out how to make the whole camera process a lot easier.
Elena, would you cancel a trip to a tropical island to work on an invention?
Of course not.
You gotta go to the tropical island when you can.
I totally agree.
I don't know if I would cancel my trip either.
But George spent three years in that kitchen experimenting.
And then he read something really exciting.
All the way across the Atlantic, a British photographer named Richard Maddox had been working on the exact same problem.
And Maddox had a brilliant solution.
Way simpler than the runny chemicals on a glass plate method.
Maddox invented a dry plate where the chemicals were already imbued in the plate.
Like kind of how you can eat cereal in a bowl with milk sloshing around.
Or, if you're in a hurry, you can grab a cereal bar to eat that's dry.
Make sense?
Yeah, it makes sense because I love cereal bars.
Cereal bar, cereal bar, you can eat it in your car.
Yeah!
Exactly.
So the cereal bar has the dried milk in it, right?
You get your cereal only in dry form.
What the heck is a cereal bar?
Don't worry about it, George.
The point is, dry plates are way better than wet, messy ones.
So George experimented with this method and eventually he started making loads of dry plates in a factory.
His factory, because he starts a business.
The Eastman Dry Plate Company, established 1881.
But for our old boy George, that wasn't enough.
I mean, do we use dry plates today?
No, we do not.
Nope.
I couldn't even imagine.
No, thank you.
Exactly.
George wanted to make photography even easier.
And so he came up with a roll of film.
George goes from huge piece of glass to dry plates to tiny thin paper film.
And the film worked.
The same as the dry plates, just way smaller, so much more portable and easy to use.
And that film allowed him to invent.
Make a note right now to pick up a roll or two of dependable Kodak film.
The film in the familiar yellow box.
The Kodak camera.
George made up the word itself.
Yes, K is my favorite letter.
It seemed strong and incisive.
Huh, I've never heard of anyone having a favorite letter.
I like J, personally.
Hmm.
Anyways, the Kodak camera cost 25 back in the day, which is more than most people earned in one whole week.
Goodness.
Oh, God.
Yeah, so not a lot of people could buy it.
I mean, it was like, do I buy my family food for the week, or do I buy a camera?
Food.
That's a good choice.
That's a smart choice.
Personally, I like food.
I want people to get three square meals a day, but also buy cameras, especially if they're my cameras.
So in 1900, he came out with a camera called the Brownie that cost just $1.
And he did even more.
In 1930, George Eastman decided... He would give away a free camera.
It was a Brownie camera to every child that turned 12 that year.
And this was a huge deal because it was during the Great Depression.
A quarter of people across the US end up losing their jobs.
Lots of schools are closed, especially in the countryside.
Many people didn't have enough money for food or for rent.
And we have pictures of that, because now we could document not only the beautiful things but also the sad ones.
That's really interesting, you know, because there's so much going on.
So even just having this camera is like creating jobs.
And then the kids, even if they're going through whatever they're going through in the Depression...
They're able to take a camera and take a picture.
Yeah, they can take a picture of fun.
Yeah, yeah, or things that they enjoy and they can look at it later.
And over the next hundred years, pictures change the world, really.
Like in the 50s and 60s, photos show people how unfairly African Americans are being treated.
And photos let people empathize with strangers and say, hey, that's not right.
And they stand up for things by protesting.
And we have pictures of the protests, too.
Mm-hmm.
And we start documenting our own lives from childhood to the golden years.
Today, every time you press a button to take a picture with your cell phone, you're doing exactly what Mr Eastman had wanted with that first camera making photography simple and easy not only to take but also to share with the world.
Believe it or not, we have George Eastman to thank for our smartphone cameras too, because there was an inventor at Kodak that brought us the first digital camera in 1975.
And from there, cameras get smaller and smaller.
Eventually, they end up on our phones, making it easy to take selfies we can share on Snapchat.
Now, more than ever, pictures are everywhere, and we have quite a few people to thank for that.
Now that it's easier than ever to take a picture, how do you two, Joy Elena, think that will change the future?
Well, I mean, it's easier, but the thing I don't really like about it is that...
People can get snooped on because of pictures and videos, and then there's Photoshop and you can make it seem like it's really good when it's bad, or you can make it seem really bad when it's good.
So that's what I don't like.
But what I do like is that you can take pictures with your friends, you can record.
Yeah, I really like that idea of it's not just an activity you do by yourself, it's something you can share.
You can share it with your friends, you can share it with your family.
And now with the internet, you can put it on Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram.
So it's like everyone can kind of be a part of your community.
And I mean, it's a good thing.
But like you're saying, it's also kind of a bad thing.
Yeah, it's a bad thing.
It can be.
It can be, yeah, yeah.
And I think part of that is, you know, if you're always in your phone, you know you don't actually get to connect with them face-to-face.
You're connecting with them over these images or over the Internet.
Yeah, and they're not saying it's bad, but they're not saying it's good.
Yeah, yeah.
What about you, Paulina?
I think it's really great to take pictures, but I also like to remember to look up from my phone once in a while.
Yeah, yeah.
Something we can all keep in mind.
Well, thanks so much for being with us, Paulina.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Fare thee well.
Bye, George.
Bye, George.
Nowadays, cameras can do so many cool things.
Do you ever do anything fancy with your phone, like filters, Elena?
Well, sometimes my mom and I take pictures on Snapchat, whether we do the dog filter and we do the face swap and really funny videos.
You do the face swap?
Yeah, we do the face swap.
So you put your mom's face on your body, and you put your face... Yeah.
Well, since she's your mom, can you really tell the difference, or do you guys look exactly alike?
We basically look exactly alike.
That's so weird.
Nuts.
Well, what do you think cameras will be like in the future?
I think that they're going to be like.
I think it's going to be so cool where like, you take a picture and then, like you're going to get a picture printed out, then you can like, click onto the picture and then you'll be able to make it into a video.
Like you can like print out a video, put it in Glassman, pop it and like, tap it, like how you would do it, like on your normal phone, and then you can watch a video.
That's really interesting, yeah.
Or like you can touch it when it comes to life and then you kind of like control the movement of it.
Yeah, if it's like if a man can go to the moon, I'm pretty sure that you can make printouts of video.
I'm pretty sure you're right.
And that's exactly the kind of attitude we should have as inventors.
It's like, if we can do that, we can definitely do that easy.
We also asked our listeners what they think cameras will be like in the future.
And they had a lot of ideas.
My camera of the future, you could go inside your picture whenever you want.
You could press a button on it that then it prints it out as a toy.
So then you could have a little toy of your friends, or a little toy of a tree, or a little toy of anything.
Once you take a picture, you can literally display it in a holographic scenario, 3D and everything.
I think cameras will be able to transport you to any destination you want, if you have a picture of it.
We could make a camera that's able to explore most of our oceans.
You are able to take pictures of ghosts and monsters and scary things, because I love scary things.
Now I want to tell you about some camera technology that's really incredible.
It's pretty cool.
It almost sounds like science fiction.
It's called the Argus 2, and it uses digital cameras to help blind people see.
Whoa, so like a bionic eye?
Exactly like a bionic eye.
The Argus was created by a team of researchers at USC, led by Dr. Mark Humayun.
It uses a tiny implant placed behind the eye and a digital camera, which Dr Humayun says had to be super small.
It couldn't be this big, gigantic camera, because nobody could wear it on their head or in the glasses.
They made special glasses for the Argus that have a tiny camera in between the lenses, right above your nose.
And this camera sends the images to the implant in the eye.
The Argus is designed for people with a specific type of blindness called retinitis pigmentosa.
It makes people lose their sight over time.
And Dr. Humayun says the device works differently for every patient.
Some of these patients haven't seen for 50 years.
So you know, initially it's not like putting on the glasses and hooking them up to a camera and they immediately see.
It takes them a period of time to their brain to get used to seeing again.
And what people see with the Argus isn't anything like normal vision.
They only see shapes and outlines of things when the lighting is just right.
And there's no color.
In the beginning, what I was seeing just didn't make any sense to me.
That's one of Dr. Humayun's patients, Terry Byland.
And little by little, I could see these little pinpoints of light.
I thought that was pretty cool.
I mean, there wasn't much to it, but it was neat to be able to see it.
The technology improved over time, and Terry got better at interpreting what he saw with the Argus.
And he figured out that he could see things much better if there was a lot of contrast, like a very bright thing in a very dark space, like the fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I could see the vertical light go up as they were going up in there, and I could see it when it exploded.
I got to see it all.
When I saw that last year for the first time that good, I thought, it really got me.
Terry is hopeful that the Argus will just get better and better because Dr Humayan and his team are working on improvements all the time.
I don't know how far the technology can go, but I'm hoping that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that in fact, using this device, patients can actually read, recognize faces and then watch TV and perhaps perhaps someday drive.
But that right now is not what you can do with the current device, but that's something that I hope we can do in the near future.
It's pretty crazy to think that without all of those ancient philosophers and astronomers experimenting with the camera obscura, we wouldn't be talking about bionic eyes today.
Or without George Eastman deciding to cancel his tropical vacation.
Maybe one of you out there listening has an idea for the next big camera innovation.
Head over to foreverago.org and tell us about it.
Forever Ago is brought to you by Brains On and American Public Media.
It's produced by Molly Bloom, Mark Sanchez, Sandon Totten, and Alyssa Dudley.
We had engineering help from Parker McDaniels and John Miller.
Production help comes courtesy of Warren D. Our fact checker is Ryan Katz.
We'd also like to thank Austin Cross Marley Foyer Worker Otto Alyssa Jung Perry and Jeffrey Bezoi.
Is there anyone you want to thank today, Elena?
I would like to thank Paulina and Joy for inviting me to be on the show.
Oh, yeah.
Anytime.
Hey, how about a selfie before we go?
Sure.
Sure.
Three, two, one, cheese!
Bye!
Bye!
