History of technology:

When thinking about documentary we tend to forget about photojournalism however without this , documentary film, would have never been developed. Below is my summary of the history of technology within documentary and photojournalism.

17^th century-Was the era of the magic lantern which was images projected onto a screen via light manly being candles. Although no one can say for sure who invented the magic lantern there is knowledge on ‘fathers of the lamp’ where there are many highlighted historical prefences to the lamp within either drawings or even written extracts. These are ; Giovanni de Fontana, Giovanni Baptista della Porta  and Athanasius Kircher . Liber Instrumentorum by Giovanni de Fontana where there was a sketch of a male holding a lantern projecting a devil which was during the 1420’s where lanterns weren’t even recognised.  However as there is no description on whether the individual is carrying a lantern there is a controversial argument whether Giovanni de Fontana should be one of the founders. However on the other hand Athanasius Kircher the most thought of father of the lamp where he used other ideas and expanded them into creating the magic lantern. Although there are still today many arguments on whether he did invent this technology changing object. As although he was a father of the cloth and people were more likely to believe him he only conducted a study of the lantern and there is no actual evidence that it was created by him. Unknown . (2007). History of the Magic Lantern

1820’s- The first photograph was taken. This was taken by a well educated French upper class business man Joseph Nicephire Niepce. His image was a landscape sceenary picture that is a ‘View from the Window at Le Gras (1826)—the world's first permanent photograph from nature—and the work of its creator, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce., Unknown author. (Unknown ). biography,discovery,First photo Symposiun. He produced this photo with very little equipment as shown in the second image on the right hand side;

This was found recently within a secret lab that was discovered in 2010 in niece’s house. As during his death his heirs hid the lab room and forbid anyone to enter and with respect for many centuries no one did. However fortunately for scientists and many media fans the discover of this lab has now opened knowledge like no other enabling us to understand and respect images that were taken during this time with greater respect.

1824- Thaumatrope was inventented, this was a Victorian toy that gave the illusion that an image was moving by rotating two different images one after the other. This was invented by English physiciaian named J. A. Paris.

1832-  Phenakistoscope was invented, this was the most popular illusion toy during the Victorian days it consisted of two disc in  which they moved the images appeared to being in motion. This was created by Joseph plateau.

1834-there was another illusional victorian toy that was invented being the Zoetrope. This was very much like the Phenakistoscope this was slots instead of discs. 

1839-Here was the invention of ‘calotype' in which the inventor William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877) invented negatives with light sensitive paper that would enable images that are taken to be processed quickly rather than the long process that was assigned in other inventions before. Although his invention was thought to be by accident he un-knowingly enabled people to produce multi copies of an image.

1878- Eadweard Muybridge finally achieves capturing movement. He was one of the first to capture movement with success by focusing on one horse in a race. He although an American was born within Britain is one of the most influential photographers of all time as he not only set standards but also set himself limits to achieve, which is clearly shown in his capturing the motion of the horse. This was achieved by him setting up various amounts of cameras with trip wires attached beside the track , which were in accurate measured distance from each other. These then when tripped released the shutter taking a still photograph of that movement. From there all photographs captured all together created the movement of the horse. He was the first person to ever prove that for a brief second all four legs of a horse in mid run don’t touch the floor. ’Horses can fly’

1882- Onwards- Étienne-Jules Marey uses Muybridges study and creates the first photographic gun. This enabled users to shoot 12 frames a time making it possible to see 7 acts of movement at once.He mainly used this to capture birds movements and also focusing again on the theory that a ‘horse can fly.’ For many years within this time period the development of cameras grew fast and was achieving great things such as George Eastman founder of Kodak with its first still camera.