| Timeline |
|---|
| 1553 CE | Giambattista della Porta, Italian inventor, improved the camera obscura. | |
| 1558 CE | Giovanni Battista della Porta, Italian artist, published his 'Natural Magic', the first published account of the use of the camera obscura as an aid to artists. | |
| 1560 CE | The portable camera obscura allows precise tracing of an image in Italy. | |
| 1727 CE | Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers and experiments with the darkening action of light on mixtures of chalk and silver nitrate (1725-1727) | |
| 1760 CE | Tiphaigne de la Roche predicts photography in 'Giphantie' | |
| 1777 CE | Carl Wilhelm Scheele proves ammonia stabilizes darkened silver salts | |
| 1786 CE | Gilles-Louis Chrétien develops the Physionotrace for profile portraits | |
| 1802 CE | Thomas Wedgwood, following the experiments of Schulze and Scheele, produces silhouettes by use of silver nitrate but is unable to fix the images | |
| 1806 CE | William Hyde Wollaston invents the camera lucida | |
| 1807 CE | The camera lucida improves image tracing. | |
| 1816 CE | Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's attempts at photography he called heliography (sundrawing). He records a view from his workroom window using an 8 hour exposure on paper sensitized with silver chloride, but he is only partially able to fix the image. | |
| 1816 CE | The single-wire telegraph is introduced. | |
| 1819 CE | Sir John Herschel discovers the photographic fixative, hyposulfite of soda. | |
| 1822 CE | Niépce succeeds in obtaining a photographic copy of an engraving superimposed on glass | |
| 1826 CE | Niépce achieves his first photographic image with a camera obscura (1816-1826) | |
| 1826 CE | The invention of the Thaumatrope, a 'persistence of vision' toy, is credited to John Ayrton Paris | |
| 1826 CE | Niépce, using a camera, makes a view from his workroom window on a pewter plate | |
| 1827 CE | Charles Wheatstone describes a moving shutter | |
| 1829 CE | Daguerre joins Niepce to pursue photographic inventions. | |
| 1829 CE | Niépce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre form a 10-year partnership to develop photography | |
| 1832 CE | Joseph Plateau builds the Phenakisticope, an optical toy, that creates the illusion of movement by mounting drawings on the face of a slotted, twirling disk | |
| 1832 CE | Wheatstone invents a non-photographic stereoscopic viewing device | |
| 1833 CE | William Henry Fox Talbot begins experimenting with photogenic drawings | |
| 1835 CE | Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre produced the first daguerreotype photograph. | |
| 1835 CE | Talbot photographs window at Lacock Abbey | |
| 1837 CE | Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre creates his first daguerreotype. He cut exposure times to 20 minutes. | |
| 1838 CE | In England, Wheatstone's Stereoscope shows pictures in 3-D. | |
| 2 Jan 1839 CE | French photographer Louis Daguerre takes the first photograph of the Moon. | |
| 1839 CE | Fox Talbot in England begins producing photographs from negatives. | |
| 1839 CE | Herschel invents photographic hypo fixative. | |
| 1839 CE | The Daguerrotype photo process announced at French Academy of Science. | |
| 1839 CE | John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph. | |
| 1839 CE | The daguerreotype is publicly announced at the Academy of Sciences in Paris | |
| 1839 CE | Hippolyte Bayard produces direct-positive photographic images on sensitized paper. | |
| 1839 CE | Giroux Daguerreotype camera is introduced it is the first commercially-manufactured camera | |
| 1839 CE | Alexander Wolcott receives first American patent in photography for his camera | |
| 1839 CE | The Petzval photographic lens is introduced. | |
| 1840 CE | John W. Draper of New York invents astronomical photography and makes the first US celestial photograph of the Moon. | |
| 1840 CE | Alexander Wolcott patents Photographic Process. | |
| 1840 CE | Draper takes first successful photo of the Moon (a daguerrotype). | |
| 1841 CE | Petzval of Austria builds an f/36 photographic lens. | |
| 1841 CE | William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype photographic process. | |
| 1843 CE | The photographic enlarger is invented in the US. | |
| 1843 CE | Anna Atkins produced the first photographically illustrated album 'British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions' | |
| 1844 CE | Talbot publishes 'Pencil of Nature' | |
| 1845 CE | H.L. Fizeau and J Leon Foucault take the first photo of Sun. | |
| 1845 CE | Mathew Brady begins to photograph famous persons of his time, including Daniel Webster, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper | |
| 1846 CE | In Germany, Zeiss begins manufacturing lenses. | |
| 1847 CE | Louis Désiré Blanquard-Evard improves Talbot's Calotype process and sets up a photographic printing establishment | |
| 1848 CE | James K Polk became the first US President to be photographed in office (by Matthew Brady). | |
| 1848 CE | Claude Felix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor uses albumen on glass plates for negatives | |
| 1849 CE | The photographic slide is invented. | |
| 1849 CE | William Bond obtains the first photograph of Moon through a telescope. | |
| 1849 CE | Portrait photography studies by D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson (1840-1849) | |
| 1849 CE | Maxime Du Camp travels to Egypt to photograph monuments | |
| 1850 CE | Mathew Brady publishes a collection entitled 'A Gallery of Illustrious Americans' | |
| 1850 CE | Albumen printing paper is introduced by L. D. Blanquart-Evrard | |
| 1851 CE | In Britain, Talbot makes first instantaneous photographs using electric spark illumination with a 1/100000 second exposure. | |
| 1851 CE | Frederick Scott Archer publishes wet-collodion photographic process (the 'wet plate' process). | |
| 1852 CE | Talbot patents photoglyphic engraving which produces printable steel plates | |
| 12 Jul 1854 CE | George Eastman was born in Marshall, NY | |
| 1854 CE | Disderi patents carte-de-viste portraiture which simplifies photography. | |
| 1854 CE | Ambrotype, a positive collodion photographic image, is patented in the US. | |
| 1855 CE | Ferrotype photographic process (tintypes) is introduced to US. | |
| 1856 CE | Poitevan starts photolithography. | |
| 1856 CE | The Tin-type camera is patented by Hamilton Smith of Gambier, Ohio. | |
| 1856 CE | Photojournalism of Crimean War documented by Roger Fenton, James Robertson, and Carol Popp de Scathmari. | |
| 1856 CE | Alexander Parkes, years before its photographic potential was realized, invented celluloid as a 'transparent support for sensitive coating', but he never was able to use it photographically. | |
| 1857 CE | Scott's phonautograph is a forerunner of Edison's phonograph in France. | |
| 1857 CE | Frederick Laggenheim takes first photo of a solar eclipse. | |
| 1857 CE | In Britain, photographer Oscar Rejlander creates allegorical multiphoto compositions. | |
| 1858 CE | Donati's comet becomes the first to be photographed. | |
| 1858 CE | Francis Frith photographs scenes from Upper Egypt and Ethiopia | |
| 1858 CE | Henry Peach Robinson's photograph 'Fading Away' establishes him as a chronicler of the Victorian scene with multiple negative compositions of a life near its end | |
| 1859 CE | The wide-angled lens first appears on cameras. | |
| 1859 CE | Sutton panoramic camera is patented | |
| 1860 CE | The first aerial photo in the US is taken from a balloon over Boston. | |
| 1860 CE | Abraham Lincoln is photographed during his first presidential campaign by Mathew Brady | |
| 1860 CE | Nadar photographs Paris from a balloon | |
| 1861 CE | Francois Willeme opens a photosculpture studio in Paris | |
