The First Camera.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XXII, 31 May 1902, Page 1091

The First Camera.

The camera was invented by an Italian named Baptista Porta, though it was not at first used for photc.grapiling. It was in reality merely a dark room, into which the light was admitted through a little round hide in one side. The rays of light coming from objects outside of this room entered it through this aperture and made a picture on the other side of the room glowing in all the beauty and colour of nature itself, but rather indistinct and upside down. This dark room was contrived by Porta about the middle of the sixteenth century. He improved it later by placing a glass lens in the aperture and outside a mirror, which received the rays of light and reflected them through the lens, so that the image upon the opposite wall within was made much brighter, more distinct and in a natural or erect position. This was really the first camera obscura, an invention which is enjoyed to the present day', being situated often upon a hilltop, where a picturesque country surrounding may’ be reflected through a lens which is placed in the centre of the conical roof. New, our modern photographic camera is merely a small camera cbscura in its simplest form, carrying a lens at one end and a ground glass screen at the other. It is, h< wever, often much more complicated in its construction.