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Photography is the recording of pictures with the use of an appliance known as a camera which captures light, through device called a photographic lens, onto a light sensitive means, such as film or an electronic sensor. Light patterns are reflected or emitted from the time exposed subjects and rendered onto a sensitive chemical or electronic medium.The invention of photography is the result of a number of independent technical discoveries, including the pinhole camera in the 10th century, silver nitrate in the 13th century, and silver chloride in the 16th century. William Homberg then discovered how light darkened certain chemicals in the 17th Century.
The actual photographic process dates back to the 1820s, when the first permanent photographic image, which took eight hours to expose, was produced in 1826 by the French inventor, Nicephore Niepce.
Other significant developments were pioneered William Fox Talbot who had created negative images by 1840 and John Herschel who was the first to use the terms photography, positive and negative. He also discovered the means to fix pictures and make them permanent and made the first glass negative in 1839. By 1852 Frederick Scott Archer had invented the wet plate process, which was used until the late 1880s when the dry plate was introduced.
In 1884 George Eastman invented film technology which replaced photographic plates, and became the origin of the film cameras still in use today.