Short History of Photographic Films
Two chaps in France, Joseph Nièpce and Luis Jaques Mandè Daquèrre developed a system how photographs was taken by exposing them on a silver-plated copper plate. Joseph Nièpce is considered as a creator of the first photograph in the history. In the middle of the nineteen´th century their invention, Daquèrreotype, was widely used all over the world.
William Talbot was busy with a negative/positive solution, which led to glass plates and finally a sheet of nitrocellulose or later plastic film, coated with an emulsion of light-sensitive silver halide salts was invented. When exposed, the silver salt grains are converted to metallic silver, which forms a black part of the film negative.
In 1889, George Eastman took the command and photographing turned to everymans activity. |
It was time to get colors on a film. Kodacrome was introduced in 1935 but the first commercially viable film was Agfacolor, in 1937.  Before that Dr. Edvin Land invented a process to get "instant" pictures. It was a beginning of a famous Polaroid brand.
The first omen what the future holds was revealed in 1984, Canon demonstrated digital camera. About ten years later film industry did their last effort to stay alive. Advanced Photo System, APS, cameras were brought to light. Bright idea, but too late. You don´t need to be a prophet to say, that the end of polymer strips has begun. CCD and CMOS is now in the lead, but who knows how far ? |
