Category Archives: Photography
The Rights of Photographs
Today in 1865, photographs and photographic negatives were added to protected works under U.S. copyright law.
Posted in Law, Photography, This day in information
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Launching the Photography Industry
Today in 1839, the Daguerreotype process was presented to the French Academy of Sciences by Francois Arago, a physicist and politician. Arago told the Academy that it was “…indispensable that the Government should compensate M. Daguerre, and that France should then nobly give to … Continue reading
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Photography, Then and Now
Twenty years ago we took a photograph, had it printed, and kept it safe in an album we brought out once a year. Now we snap a photo, or more likely a dozen, share them online on the spot, and … Continue reading
Posted in Analog, Digitization, Photography
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First Photograph of a Solar Eclipse
Today in 1854, William and Frederick Langenheim made eight sequential photographs of the first total eclipse of the sun visible in North America since the invention of photography. Although six other daguerreotypists and one calotypist are known to have documented … Continue reading
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From the Archives: Moving Pictures by Phone
Today in 1924, AT&T demonstrated long distance telephotography, now known as fax, with the transmission of pictures over telephone wires between Cleveland and New York. Commercial service began in a handful of cities the following year. For many decades, telephotography … Continue reading
Posted in Imaging, Photography, Telephone, This day in information
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First US Photography Patent
Today in 1840, to Alexander S. Wolcott received the first U.S. patent (No. 1,582) for a photographic invention for his “method of taking a likeness by means of a concave reflector and plates so prepared that luminous or other rays will act thereon.” A … Continue reading
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First photograph of a solar eclipse
Today in 1857, Frederick Langenheim took the first photograph of a solar eclipse. From the Metropolitan Museum website: “In 1841-42, William and Frederick Langenheim opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia. Known for their technical innovations the former journalists were not … Continue reading
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First U.S. Moon Shot
Today in 1840, John William Draper presented to the Lyceum of Natural History of New York a daguerreotype of the “first representation of the moon’s surface ever taken by photography.” As the Once and Future Moon blog notes, today is also “the 100th … Continue reading
Moving Pictures: Zoopraxiscope
Today in 1882, Eadweard Muybridge lectured at the Royal Institution in London in front of a sellout audience, demonstrating the Zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip. An 1878 experiment by Muybridge in the United States using 24 … Continue reading
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Instant Photography
Today in 1947, Edwin H. Land demonstrated the first instant camera, the Polaroid Land camera, during a meeting of the Optical Society of America. Land started thinking about an instant camera a few years earlier when his 3-year-old daughter asked … Continue reading
Posted in Photography, This day in information
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The Story of Information 