The Man With A Camera: When Was It Made?

Man with a Camera was an American television crime drama series starring Charles Bronson as a war veteran turned photographer and investigator. It was broadcast on ABC from October 10, 1958, to February 29, 1960.

The first camera

The history of the camera is a long one, with many innovations and inventors contributing to its development over the centuries. The first device that could be considered a camera was the camera obscura, which means "dark room" in Latin. This ancient technique involved using a small hole in a wall or box to project an inverted image of the outside world onto the opposite wall. The earliest known written records of this idea are attributed to Han Chinese philosopher Mozi, who lived around 470 to 391 BC.

Over time, the camera obscura evolved into more sophisticated devices. In the 18th century, portable "camera boxes" became popular among the wealthy, who used them for drawing and painting practice. However, it wasn't until the 19th century that the first permanent photograph was captured.

The first mass-marketed camera was the daguerreotype, produced by Alphonse Giroux in 1839. It cost 400 francs (around $7,000 in today's money) and had an exposure time of 5 to 30 minutes. This camera was soon followed by other innovations, such as the collodion wet plate process and the gelatin dry plate, which reduced exposure times.

The introduction of "film" was a significant advancement in camera technology. American entrepreneur George Eastman created the first camera using a roll of paper (and later celluloid) film, called "The Kodak," in 1888. This camera cost only $25 and came with the catchy slogan, "You press the button... we do the rest." The Kodak camera revolutionized photography, making it accessible to the middle class and popularising the use of photographs to commemorate special occasions.

Since then, there have been numerous advancements in camera technology, from the first digital camera in 1975 to the modern smartphone cameras that are now an integral part of our daily lives.

The first movie camera

The history of the first movie camera is a fascinating one. The evolution of photography in the mid-19th century, especially during the Civil War, saw photographers documenting American battlefields for the first time. This set off a series of experiments with ways to exhibit photographs, leading to the creation of a simple toy called the "zoetrope", which could display a series of pictures in rapid succession, creating the illusion of motion.

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge conducted an experiment where he set up 12 cameras along a racetrack to capture sequential images of a horse in motion. This was technically the first-ever movie. Muybridge's work, along with that of French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey, who invented the "chronophotographic gun" in 1882, laid the foundation for motion picture cameras.

In 1888, Louis Le Prince built a single-lens camera and used it to film a brief silent movie called "Roundhay Garden Scene", making him the inventor of the first movie camera. However, Le Prince mysteriously vanished in 1890 before he could patent his invention, and Thomas Edison's employee, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, is often credited with the invention of the first movie camera, the Kinetograph, in 1891.

The Kinetograph, powered by an electric motor, was capable of capturing moving images on celluloid film. Edison and his team staged demonstrations of this camera in the early 1890s and it is considered the first camera to take motion pictures on a moving strip of film. However, the films were viewed one at a time through a peephole and were not projected onto a screen.

The first digital camera

The invention of the digital camera was a major milestone in the history of photography, and it revolutionized the way images are captured, processed, and shared. Today, digital cameras are widely used and have become an integral part of our daily lives.

The development of the digital camera can be traced back to the 1960s when Eugene F. Lally of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory conceived the idea of using a mosaic photosensor to capture digital images of planets and stars. However, the technology at the time was not advanced enough to turn this idea into reality. It was not until the 1970s that the first digital camera was created, and even then, it was not commercially available.

The first commercial digital camera was the Dycam Model 1, released in 1990. This camera used a CCD image sensor and recorded data onto internal memory. It could then be connected to a personal computer for viewing and printing images.

The first colour photograph

The three-colour method, which is the foundation of virtually all practical colour processes, was first suggested in an 1855 paper by Maxwell. In his studies of colour vision, Maxwell showed that any visible hue or grey tone could be made by mixing only three pure colours of light – red, green, and blue.

In 1891, Gabriel Lippmann, a professor of physics at the Sorbonne, demonstrated a colour process based on the phenomenon of light interference, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1908. However, it was the Lumière brothers' autochrome, invented in the early 20th century, that became the first commercially successful colour process.

The first camera phone

However, there were camera phone prototypes before the Kyocera VP-210. In 1993, Daniel A. Henderson created two prototypes of a "wireless picturephone technology" device called the Intellect. The prototypes are now in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 1997, Philippe Kahn created the first working camera phone by combining a Casio QV-10 digital camera, a Motorola StarTAC flip phone, and a laptop. Kahn's motivation was to take and share pictures of his newborn daughter with family and friends.

In the years following the release of the Kyocera VP-210, other manufacturers also released camera phones. In June 2000, Samsung launched the SCH-V200 in South Korea. The SCH-V200 could take up to 20 photos at a resolution of 0.35MP and featured a 1.5-inch TFT LCD. However, the phone could not send photos directly to another device. In November 2000, Sharp launched the J-SH04, also known as the J-Phone, in Japan. The J-SH04 could take photos at a resolution of 0.11MP and, notably, allowed users to send photos electronically.

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