Before the Victorian era, most of Britain’s population couldn’t read or write and had limited access to education. Queen Victoria believed that education should be for all, and by the end of her reign, going to school became compulsory for all children, rich or poor. 19th Century photograph of Cheapside in London, England. On some models it was permanently fixed and hinged (figs. 67, 67a). This method was adopted on Sanderson cameras. Expansion of the railways meant that people could travel faster and further than ever before. All of Britain’s major cities, like London, Glasgow and Manchester, were now connected. Before trains, the fastest mode of transport was horses. All aboard! As the daguerreotype process only creates one image at a time, multiple copies of the same picture could only be produced by taking several photographs, or by engraving directly from the daguerreotype plate.

Calotype images are not as pin-sharp as daguerreotypes, but they had one great advantage: more than one image could be produced from a single negative. Yet both processes were cumbersome and very expensive. What was needed was a faster, cheaper method to really fuel the fire of Victorian photomania. People having incorrect notions about what the UK’s speed camera sign displays may not matter much in and of itself. Whether people see it for what it is or not, if people know that it is a speed camera sign — it serves its purpose. Lewis Hine (1874–1940) was a seminal American photographer, best remembered for the contribution he made to the reform of American child labour laws. He is also known for the work he undertook on behalf of the National Child Labour Committee, which aimed to help protect children from exploitation and danger in the workplace. Originally trained as a sociologist, Hine’s first photographic project documented European immigrants as they arrived at Ellis Island, New York. Hine always imbued his subjects with dignity, communicating a sense of the immigrants’ individuality and challenging the prejudice they faced.Early in his career Steichen was associated with pictorialism and its soft focus style, although he gradually abandoned this in favour of ‘straight’ photography. Straight photography was aligned with modernism, which favoured clean lines, clear compositions and an overall sense of design and was gaining ground at the time, particularly in Europe. In 1886, after some minor modifications, Gray’s camera was manufactured in America by the Western Electric Company and sold by the Scovill Manufacturing Company. Realising the, as yet untapped, commercial possibilities of the camera, Carl Stirn of New York entered into negotiations to buy the patent rights from Gray.

Single extension refers to cameras with a bellows extension the same as the length of the baseboard. The lens would normally have a focal length slightly less than this. By fitting either standard to a frame that slides within the baseboard the camera becomes a Double extension (fig. 41). Triple extension (fig. 42) was achieved in various ways. On field cameras a further outer frame could be used to carry the rear standard. Tripod FixingRay-Jones’ work sits within a larger tradition of photographs of Britons at leisure, starting with Sir Benjamin Stone in the 19th century and later including Paul Martin and Homer Sykes among others. His unique compositions have in turn influenced a later generation of photographers that most notably includes Chris Killip and Martin Parr. This pattern has similarities with the Kinnear pattern and with the small front focus bellows cameras produced in the wet-plate period.

Cyanotypes, also known as blueprints and commonly used by the engineering industry, were made using chemically photosensitive paper. Relatively cheap and easy to produce, cyanotypes became very popular in 19th century amateur photographic circles. However, Leitz had been trained in watchmaking and other small engineering projects. He was a leader who believed success came from designing the next technology and encouraged his employees to experiment more often. In 1879, the company changed names to reflect its new director. The company moved to binoculars and more complex microscopes soon after. In 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was the first person to permanently capture an image taken with a camera. The Leica set a new standard, and the influence of its design can be seen in the cameras of today. While Kodak’s cameras may have been the most popular of the day, Leica’s changed the industry permanently. Kodak themselves replied with the Retina I, while a fledgling camera company in Japan, Canon, produced its first 35mm in 1936. What was The First Movie Camera? Polaroid cameras were quite popular during the seventies and eighties but suffered near obsolescence due to the rise of the digital camera. Recently, Polaroid has seen a resurgence in popularity on a wave of “retro” nostalgia. What Were The First Digital Cameras? After the Dycam Model 1, digital cameras became all the rage, with major brands such as Sony and Canon jumping into the fray.

What other processes were invented?

But when was the first proper camera invented? Well, there were many inventors who managed to ‘capture’ images in one way or another. For example, Johann Heinrich Schulze captured an image of cut-out letters on a bottle of a light-sensitive slurry in 1717. He had discovered that silver salts darkened when exposed to light. However, this was not durable. The first photograph taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was of the view from a window of his family’s home. This view was of the courtyard. The image is titled ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’. Among the thousands of items of ephemera in our collection are a number of Victorian illustrated song sheets. Very attractive in their own right, these also provide a fascinating glimpse into contemporary attitudes to photography. One of my personal favourites is the song sheet for a comic song entitled ‘Detective Camera’. Many charities for the poor, like the Salvation Army and Barnardo’s, were established during the Victorian era. They fed the hungry in soup kitchens, and looked after the poorest children in orphanages. If a person sits in a dark room, camera obscura could allow a hole the size of a pin to project an image of the garden outside on their wall. If you made a box with a hole on one side and thin paper on the other, it could capture the image of the world on that paper.

To these can be added the less common larger sizes 20" x 16" and 24" x 20". Post-card - 5 ½" x 3 ½" - was a common print size from the early 1900s but few cameras were made specifically for this format. British cameras were also produced in metric sizes especially 9 x 12 cm and 13 x 18 cm. Believe it or not, television didn’t exist in Victorian times! Therefore, Victorians entertained themselves by going to the theatre or watching live music. Visiting the music hall was a popular British pastime for poorer people. For a penny, customers were treated to a variety show, showcasing musicians, comedians and plays. Diagonal cornered - To lessen the wear on the vulnerable 90° corners they were replaced by two 45° corners and a short diagonal. This pattern was used from the late 1890s and was in general use by the early 1900s though the older square cornered pattern still remained on some models especially large cameras and tailboards (fig. 24). Although known primarily as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872), Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) was also a mathematics lecturer at Oxford University, a Deacon at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford and an accomplished photographer. Carroll, christened Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, practised photography for over 25 years and photographed hundreds of sitters in his Oxford studio.After further work, he discovered the possibility of developing an invisible latent image (formed during much shorter exposure times), and patented his improved process in February 1841. This process – known as the calotype – is the ancestor of nearly all photographic methods using chemistry, until the emergence of digital photography during the late 1990s. This photograph, The Steerage, was a turning point for Stieglitz in his move towards a modern aesthetic. His work started to become more closely aligned with photography’s inherent qualities: sharp focus, good contrast and full range of tones became important to him, and replaced the fuzzy lines and dappled surfaces favoured by the Pictorialists. This change of emphasis became known as ‘straight photography’. Have you ever assumed the picture is that of a side-profile camera?” asks CornwallLive. “Well, it turns out it shows something completely different.”