VIEWS FROM NATURE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 94, 21 March 1939, Page 6

VIEWS FROM NATURE.

The centenary of what was described one hundred years ago as the “New Method of Taking Views from Nature” has been celebrated in Trance. This is one of several very interesting- an-1 niversaries with beginnings datingback for many years that take place this year. This great step forward in the miraculous business of transferring to a flat surface an image of the actual world, complete with ready-made detail, j proportions and perspective, without any assistance from a livingartist’s eye and fingers, as a com-j mentator observes, was explained . at the time by the simple sentence, “M. Daguerre has invented a process for fixing the picture foi-med on the table of the camera obscura.” Photography, it has been well said, was discovered by no one man. It came from the early observations of the alchemists and chemists on the action of light. The evolution of the camera, however, was the outcome of the old camera obscura, the invention of which is usually, ascribed to Baptista Porta in 1553, though its principle was noted in much earlier times by authoritative writers. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, so great had been the advance, the portable camera obscura had become a regular article of commerce and was used to obtain sketches from nature. No doubt, a commentator remarks, its use for popular entertainment was known bv the end of that century. It had even been used by draughtsmen, who “fixed” the image with pencil and then coloured it; in the days of James I Kepler had a darkened tent and lens which lie carried about and used for sketching landscapes. It was the “fixing” or photochemical side of photography that was missing- and this, historians relate, was accidentally discovered by Daguerre -who found that the effect produced by exposing an iodized silver plate in a camera would result in a.n image if the plate were fumed with mercury vapour. Dag-uerre was working- in conjunction with the Frenchman Niepce and their inventions were richly rewarded by the I reach Government. Such w-ere the beginnings of the wonderful photography known to this age.