A healthy person
does not need a glass lens - he has his own in his eye. However, there is such
a device that cannot do without a glass lens: this is a camera.
For many
centuries, people dreamed of a substance that would be able to preserve an
imprint of light. Chemists were looking for him, but could not find. In the
end, this substance was still discovered. And it was not a chemist who
discovered it, but a painter.
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| One of the First Cameras |
In 1827, a young
woman came running into the laboratory of the famous French scientist in
excitement. All in tears, she began to beg the scientist to bring her husband,
the painter Daguerre, to reason and to convince him to return to the palette
and brush. For many months now, Daguerre has been endlessly experimenting with
the crazy goal of catching an imprint of light and storing it on a copper
plate. He abandoned all his orders and bought expensive lenses from the
optician and a lot of chemicals in the pharmacy for all the money and locked
himself in a dark room for a whole day.
The scientist
reassured the young woman and promised to exhort her husband. However, when he
got acquainted with the work of Daguerre, he not only did not scold him but, on
the contrary approved his work and told the overjoyed inventor that he was on
the right track.
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| The First Cameras |
Indeed, this
stubborn Daguerre, whom many considered crazy, managed to catch the sunbeam and
keep it: he managed to fix the imprint of light on the plate.
To do this,
Daguerre coated with silver a copper plate and then held it in mercury vapor. Then
he inserted it into the camera. The plate turned black in the places where the
light hit. The result was a metal “daguerreotype” - the ancestor of our
photograph.
However, if
Daguerre exposed his plate simply to the light, then no image would have come
out on it: the plate would have become completely black. It was necessary to
insert a lens into the camera, similar to that lens which is available in an
eye of the person or animal. And if glassmakers did not know how to make
lenses, then, of course, there would be no invention of photography.
