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CAMERA OBSCURA

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Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 107 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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CAMERA OBSCURA , an See also:optical apparatus consisting of a darkened chamber (for which its name is the Latin rendering) at the See also:top of which is placed a See also:box or See also:lantern containing a See also:convex See also:lens and sloping See also:mirror, or a See also:prism combining the lens and mirror. If we hold a See also:common See also:reading lens (a magnifying lens) in front of a See also:lamp or some other See also:bright See also:object and at some distance from it, and if we hold a See also:sheet of See also:paper vertically at a suitable distance behind the lens, we see depicted on the paper an See also:image of the lamp. This image is inverted and perverted. If now we See also:place a See also:plane mirror (e.g. a See also:lady's See also:hand See also:glass) behind the lens and inclined at an See also:angle of 450 to the See also:horizon so as to reflect the rays of See also:light vertically downwards, we can produce Na--* on a See also:horizontal sheet of Image with Mirror paper an unperverted image FIG. I. of the bright object (fig. I), i.e. the image has the same See also:appearance as the object and is not perverted as when the reflection of a printed See also:page is viewed in a mirror. This is the principle of the Imagg ''et Image without Mirror Object camera obscura, which was extensively used in sketching from nature before the introduction of See also:photography, although it is now scarcely to be seen except as an interesting See also:side-show at places of popular resort. The image formed on the paper may be traced out by a See also:pencil, and it will be noticed that in this See also:case the image is real—not virtual as in the case of the camera lucida. Generally the mirror and lens are combined into a single piece of worked glass represented in See also:section in fig. 2. Rays from See also:external See also:objects are first re- fracted at the convex See also:surface a b, then totally reflected at the plane surface a c, and finally refracted at the See also:concave surface b c (fig.

2) so as to See also:

form an image on the sheet of paper d e. The curved surfaces take the place of the lens in fig.', and the plane surface per- e forms the See also:function of the mirror. The prism Quite recently, the camera obscura has come into use with submarine vessels, the periscope being simply a camera obscura under a new name. (C. J. J.) See also:History.—The invention of this See also:instrument has generally been ascribed, as in the ninth edition of this See also:work, to the famous Neapolitan savant of the 16th See also:century, Giovanni Battista della Porta, but as a See also:matter of fact the principle of the See also:simple camera obscura, or darkened chamber with a small See also:aperture in a window or shutter, was well known and in See also:practical use for observing eclipses See also:long before his See also:time. He was anticipated in the improvements he claimed to have made in it, and all he seems really to have done was to popularize it. The increasing importance of the camera obscura as a photographic instrument makes it desirable to bring together what is known of its See also:early history, which is far more extensive than is usually recognized. In See also:southern climes, where during the summer See also:heat it is usual to See also:close the rooms from the glare of the See also:sunshine outside, we may often see depicted on the walls vivid inverted images of outside objects formed by the light reflected from them passing through chinks or small apertures in doors or window-shutters. From the opening passage of See also:Euclid's See also:Optics (c. 300 B.C.), which formed the See also:foundation for some of the earlier See also:middle See also:age See also:treatises on geometrical See also:perspective, it would appear that the above phenomena of the simple darkened See also:room were used by him to demonstrate the rectilinear See also:propagation of light by the passage of sunbeams or the See also:projection of the images of objects through small openings in windows, &c. In the See also:book known as See also:Aristotle's Problems (See also:sect. xv. cap.

5) we find the correlated problem of the image of the See also:

sun passing through a See also:quadrilateral aperture always appearing See also:round, and he further notes the lunated image of the eclipsed sun projected in the same way through the interstices of foliage or lattice-work. There are, however, very few allusions to these phenomena in the later classical See also:Greek and See also:Roman writers, and we find the first scientific investigation of them in the See also:great optical See also:treatise of the Arabian philosopher See also:Alhazen (q.v.), who died at See also:Cairo in A.D. 1038. He seems to have been well acquainted with the projection of images of objects through small apertures, and to have been the first to show that the arrival of the image of an object at the concave surface of the common nerve—or the retina—corresponds with the passage of light from an object through an aperture in a darkened place, from which it falls upon a surface facing the aperture. He also had some knowledge of the properties of concave and convex lenses and mirrors in forming images. Some two See also:hundred years later, between A.D. 1266 and 1279, these problems were taken up by three almost contemporaneous writers on optics, two of whom, See also:Roger See also:Bacon and See also:John See also:Peckham, were Englishmen, and Vitello or Witelo, a See also:Pole. That Roger Bacon was acquainted with the principle of the camera obscura is shown by his See also:attempt at solving Aristotle'sproblem stated above, in the treatise De Speculis, and also from his references to Alhazen's experiments of the same See also:kind, but although Dr John See also:Freind, in his History of Physick, has given him the See also:credit of the invention on the strength of a passage in the Perspectiva, there is nothing to show that he constructed any instrument of the kind. His arrangement of concave and plane mirrors, by which the realistic images of objects inside the See also:house or in the See also:street could be rendered visible though intangible, there alluded to, may apply to a camera on See also:Cardan's principle or to a method of aerial projection by means of concave mirrors, which Bacon was quite See also:familiar with, and indeed was known long before his time. On the strength of similar arrangements of lenses and mirrors the invention of the camera obscura has also been claimed for Leonard See also:Digges, the author of Pantometria (1571), who is said to have constructed a See also:telescope from See also:information given in a book of Bacon's experiments. See also:Archbishop Peckham, or Pisanus, in his Perspectiva Communis (1279), and Vitello, in his Optics (1270), also attempted the See also:solution of Aristotle's problem, but unsuccessfully. Vitello's work is to a very great extent based upon Alhazen and some of the earlier writers, and was first published in 1535.

A later edition was published, together with a See also:

translation of Alhazen, by F. Risner in 1572. The first practical step towards the development of the camera obscura seems to have been made by the famous painter and architect, See also:Leon Battista See also:Alberti, in 1437, contemporaneously with the invention of See also:printing. It is not clear, however, whether his invention was a camera obscura or a show box, but in a fragment of an See also:anonymous See also:biography of him, published in See also:Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (See also:xxv. 296), quoted by See also:Vasari, it is stated that he produced wonderfully painted pictures, which were exhibited by him in some sort of small closed box through a very small aperture, with great verisimilitude. These demonstrations were of two kinds, one nocturnal, showing the See also:moon and bright stars, the other diurnal, for See also:day scenes. This description seems to refer to an arrangement of a transparent See also:painting illuminated either from the back or the front and the image projected through a hole on to a See also:white See also:screen in a darkened room, as described by Porta ("Wag. Nat. xvii. cap. 7) and figured by A. See also:Kircher (Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae), who notes elsewhere that Porta had taken some arrangement of projecting images from an Albertus, whom he distinguished from Albertus See also:Magnus, and who was probably L. B. Alberti, to whom See also:Porte also refers, but not in this connexion.

G. B. I. T. Libri-Carucci dalla Sommaja (1803-1869), in his See also:

account of the invention of the camera obscura in See also:Italy (Histoire See also:des sciences mathematiques en Italie, iv. 303), makes no mention of Alberti, but draws See also:attention to an unpublished MS. of Leonardo da See also:Vinci, which was first noticed by Venturi in 1797, and has since been published in facsimile in vol. ii. of J. G. F. Ravaisson-See also:Mollien's reproductions of the See also:MSS. in the Institut de See also:France at See also:Paris (MS. D, fol. 8 recto). After discussing the structure of the See also:eye he gives an experiment in which the appearance of the reversed images of outside objects on a piece of paper held in front of a small hole in a darkened room, with their forms and See also:colours, is quite clearly described and explained with a See also:diagram, as an See also:illustration of the phenomena of See also:vision.

Another similar passage is quoted by See also:

Richter from See also:folio 4o4b of the See also:reproduction of the Codice Atlantico, in See also:Milan, published by the See also:Italian See also:government. These are probably the earliest distinct accounts of the natural phenomena of the camera obscura, but remained unpublished for some three centuries. Leonardo also discussed the old Aristotelian problem of the rotundity of the sun's image after passing through an angular aperture, but not so successfully as Maurolycus. He has also given methods of measuring the sun's distance by means of images thrown on screens through small apertures. He was well acquainted with the use of magnifying glasses and suggested a kind of telescope for viewing the moon, but does not seem to have thought of applying a lens to the camera. The first published account of the simple camera obscura was discovered by Libri in a translation of the See also:Architecture of See also:Vitruvius, with commentary by Cesare Caesariano, one of the architects of Milan See also:cathedral, published at See also:Como in 1521, shortly after the See also:death of Leonardo, and some twenty years before Porta was See also:born. He describes an experiment made by a See also:Benedictine See also:monk and architect, Dom Papnutio or Panuce, of the same kind as Leonardo's but without the demonstration. About the same time See also:Francesco Maurolico, or Maurolycus, the eminent mathematician of See also:Messina, in his Theoremata de Lumine et See also:Umbra, written in 1521, fully investigated the optical problems connected with vision and the passage of rays of light through small apertures with and without lenses, and made great advances in this direction over his predecessors. He was the first correctly to solve Aristotle's problem, stated above, and to apply it practically to See also:solar observations in a darkened room (Cosmographia, 1535). See also:Erasmus See also:Reinhold has described the method in his edition of G. Purbach's Theoricae Novae Planetarum (1542), and probably got it from Maurolycus. He says it can also be applied to terrestrial objects, though he only used it for the sun.

His See also:

pupil, Rainer Gemma-Frisius, used it for the observation of the solar See also:eclipse of See also:January 1544 at See also:Louvain, and fully described the methods he adopted for making measurements and drawings of the eclipsed sun, in his De Radio Astronomico et Geometric() (1545). He says they can be used for observation of the moon and stars and also for longitudes. The same arrangement was used by See also:Copernicus, Tycho See also:Brahe, by M. Moestlin and his pupil Kepler—the latter applying it in 1607 to the observation of a transit of Mercury—also by Johann See also:Fabricius, in 1611, for the first observations of sun-spots. It is interesting to See also:note this early employment of the camera obscura in the See also:field of astronomical See also:research, in which its latest achievements have been of such pre-eminent value. The addition of optical appliances to the simple dark chamber for the purpose of seeing what was going on outside, was first described by See also:Girolamo Cardan in his De Subtilitate (1550), as noted by Libri. The sun shining, he fixed a round glass See also:speculum (orbem e vitro) in a window-shutter, and then closing it the images of outside objects would be seen transmitted through the aperture on to the opposite See also:wall, or better, a white paper screen suitably placed. The account is not very clear, but seems to imply the use of a concave mirror rather than a lens, which might be suggested by the word orbem. He refers to Maurolycus' work with concave specula. We now come to Giovanni Battista della Porta, whose account of the camera obscura in the first edition of the Magia Naturalis, in four books (1558, See also:lib. iv. cap. 2), is very similar to Caesariano's —a darkened room, a pyramidal aperture towards the sun, and a whitened wall or white paper screens, but no lens. He discloses as a great See also:secret the use of a concave speculum in front of the aperture, to collect the rays passing through it, when the images will be seen reversed, but by prolonging them beyond the centre they would be seen larger and unreversed.

This is much the same as Cardan's method published eight years earlier, but though more detailed is not very clear. He then notes the application to See also:

portraiture and to painting by laying colours on the projected images. Nothing is said about the use of a lens or of solar observations. The second edition, in which he in the same words discloses the use of a convex lens in the aperture as a secret he had intended to keep, was not published till 1589, See also:thirty-one years after the first. In this See also:interval the use of the lens was discovered and clearly described by Daniello See also:Barbaro, a Venetian See also:noble, See also:patriarch of See also:Aquileia, in his work La Pratica della perspettiva (p. 192), published in 1568, or twenty-one years before Porta's mention of it. The lens used by Barbaro was an See also:ordinary convex or old See also:man's spectacle-glass; concave, he says, will not do. He shows how the paper must be moved till it is brought into the See also:focus of the lens, the use of a See also:diaphragm to make the image clearer, and also the application of the method for See also:drawing in true perspective. That Barbaro was really the first to apply the lens to the camera obscura is supported by See also:Marius Bettinus in his Apiaria (1645), and by Kaspar Schott in his Magia Universalis (1657), the former taunting Porta with. the See also:appropriation. In an Italian translation of Euclid's Optica, with commentary, Egnacio Danti (1573), after discussing the effects of plane, convex and concave reflectors, fully describes the method of showing reversed images passing through an aperture in a darkened room, and shows how, by placing a mirror behind the aperture, unreversed images might be obtained, both effects being illustrated by diagrams. F. Risner, who died in 158o, also in his Opticae (16o6) very clearly explained the reversal of the images of the simple camera obscura.

He notes the convenience of the method for solar observations and its previous use by some of the observers already mentioned, as well as its advantages for easily and accurately copying on an enlarged or reduced See also:

scale, especially for chorographical or topographical documents. This is probably the first See also:notice of the application of the camera to cartography and the reproduction of drawings, which is one of its See also:principal uses at the See also:present time. In the Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum et Physicarum (1585), by the Venetian Giovanni Battista See also:Benedetti, there is a See also:letter in which he discusses the simple camera obscura and mentions the improvement some one had made in it by the use of a See also:double convex lens in the aperture; he also says that the images could be made erect by reflection from any plane mirror. Thus the use of the camera and of the lens with it was well known before Porta published his second edition of the Magia Naturalis in 1589. In this the description of the camera obscura is in lib. xvii. cap. 6. The use of the convex lens, which is given as a great secret, in place of the concave speculum of the first edition, is not so clearly described as by Barbaro; the addition of the concave speculum is proposed for making the images larger and clearer, and also for making them erect, but no details are given. He describes some entertaining peep-show arrangements, possibly similar to Alberti's, and indicates how the dark chamber with a concave speculum can be used for observing eclipses. There is no mention whatever of a portable box or construction beyond the darkened room, nor is there in his later work, De Refractione Optices Parte (1593), in which he discusses the See also:analogy between vision and the simple dark room with an aperture, but incorrectly. Though Porta's merits were undoubtedly great, he did not invent or improve the camera obscura. His only novelty was the use of it as a peep-show; his descriptions of it are vague, but being published in a book of See also:general reference, which became popular, he acquired credit for the invention. The first to take up the camera obscura after Porta was See also:Kepler, who used it in the old way for solar observations in Moo, and in his Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena (1604) discusses the early problems of the passages of light through small apertures, and the rationale of the simple dark chamber.

He was the first to describe an instrument fitted with a sight and paper screen for observing the diameters of the sun and moon in a dark room. In his later book, Dioptrice (1611), he fully discusses See also:

refraction and the use of lenses, showing the See also:action of the double convex lens in the camera obscura, with the principles which regulate its use and the See also:reason of the reversal of the image. He also demonstrates how enlarged images can be produced and projected on paper by using a concave lens at a suitable distance behind the convex, as in modem telephotographic lenses. He was the first to use the See also:term camera obscura, and in a letter from See also:Sir H. See also:Wotton written to See also:Lord Bacon in 1620 we learn that Kepler had made himself a portable dark See also:tent fitted with a telescope lens and used for sketching landscapes. Further, he extended the work of Maurolycus, and demonstrated the exact analogy between the eye and the camera and the arrangement by which an inverted image is produced on the retina. In Moo the telescope came into use, and the danger of observing the sun with it was soon discovered. In 1611 Johann Fabricius published his observations of sun-spots and describes how he and his See also:father See also:fell back upon the old method of projecting the sun's image in a darkened room, finding that they could observe the spots just as well as with the telescope. They do not seem to have used a lens, or thought of using the telescope for projecting an enlarged irnaee on Kepler's principle. This was done in 1612 by Christoph Scheiner, who fully described his method of solar observation in the See also:Rosa Ursina (163o), demonstrating very clearly and practically the advantages and disadvantages of using the camera, without a lens, with a single convex lens, and with a telescopic See also:combination of convex object-glass and concave enlarging lens, the last arrangement being mounted with an adjustable screen or tablet on an See also:equatorial stand. Most of the earlier astronomical work was done in a darkened room, but here we first find the dark chamber constructed of wooden rods covered with See also:cloth or paper, and used separately to screen the observing-tablet. Various writers on optics in the 17th century discussed the principle of the simple dark chamber alone and with single or See also:compound lenses, among them See also:Jean See also:Tarde (See also:Les Astres de Borbon, 1623); See also:Descartes, the pupil of Kepler (Dioptrique, 1637); Bettinus (Apiaria, 1645); A.

Kircher (Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 1646); J. See also:

Hevelius (Selenographia, 1647); Schott Magia Universalis Naturae et Artis, 1674); C. F. M. Deschales (Curses, seu Mundus Mathematicus, 1674); Z. Traber (Nervus Opticus, 1675), but their accounts are generally more interesting theoretically than as recording progress in the practical use and development of the instrument. The earliest mention of the camera obscura in See also:England is probably in See also:Francis Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum, but it is only as an illustration of the projected images showing better on a white screen than on a See also:black one. Sir H. Wotton's letter of 1620, already noted, was not published till 165' (Reliquiae Wottonianae, p. 141), but in 1658 a description of Kepler's portable tent camera for sketching, taken from it, was published in a work called See also:Graphite, or the most excellent See also:Art of Painting, but no mention is made of Kepler. In W. See also:Oughtred's See also:English edition (1633) of the Recreations See also:mat hematiques (1627) of Jean Leurechon (" See also:Henry See also:van Etten ") there is a See also:quaint description, with figures, of the simple dark chamber with aperture, and also of a sort of tent with a lens in it and the projection on an inner wall of the See also:face of a man See also:standing outside.

The English translation of Porta's Natural Magick was published in 1658. See also:

Robert See also:Boyle seems to have been the first to construct a box camera with lens for viewing landscapes. It is mentioned in his See also:essay On the Systematic or Cosmical Qualities of Things (ch. vi.), written about 1570, as having been made several years before and since imitated and improved. It could be extended or shortened like a telescope. At one end of it paper was stretched, and at the other a convex lens was fitted in a hole, the image being viewed through an aperture at the top of the box. Robert See also:Hooke, who was some time Boyle's assistant, described (Phil. Trans., ,668, 3, p. 741) a camera lucida on the principle of the magic lantern, in which the images of illuminated and inverted objects were projected on any desired scale by means of a broad convex lens through an aperture into a room where they were viewed by the spectators. If the objects could not be inverted, another lens was used for erecting the images. From Hooke's See also:Posthumous See also:Works (1705), p. 127, we find that in one of the Cutlerian lectures on Light delivered in 168o, he illustrated the phenomena of vision by a darkened room, or perspective box, of a See also:peculiar See also:pattern, the back See also:part, with a concave white screen at the end of it, being cylindrical and capable of being moved in and out, while the fore part was conical, a double convex lens being fixed in a hole in front. The image was viewed through a large hole in the side.

It was between 4 and 5 ft. long. Johann Zahn, in his Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus (1685-'686), described and figured two forms of portable box cameras with lenses. One was a wooden box with a projecting See also:

tube in which a combination of a concave with a convex lens was fitted, for throwing an enlarged image upon the focusing screen, which in its proportions and application is very similar to our, See also:modern telephotographic objectives. The image was first thrown upon an inclined mirror and then reflected upwards to a paper screen on the top of the box. In an earlier form the image is thrown upon a See also:vertical thin paper screen and viewed through a hole in the back of the camera. There is a great See also:deal of practicalinformation on lenses in connexion with the camera and other optical See also:instruments, and the book is valuable as a repertory of early practical optics, also for the numerous references to and extracts from previous writers. An improved edition was published in 1702. Most of the writers already noticed worked out the problems connected with the projection of images in the camera obscura more by actual practice than by calculation, but See also:William See also:Molyneux, of See also:Dublin, seems to have been the first to treat them mathematically in his Dioptrica Nova (1692), which was also the first work in English on the subject, and is otherwise an interesting book. He has fully discussed the optical theory of the dark chamber, with and without a lens, and its analogy to the eye. also several optical problems See also:relating to lenses of various forms and their combinations for telescopic projection, rules for finding foci, &c. He does not, however, mention the camera obscura as an instrument in use, but in John See also:Harris's See also:Lexicon Technicum (1704) we find that the camera obscura with the arrangement called the " scioptric See also:ball," and known as scioptricks, was on See also:sale in See also:London, and after this must have been in common use as a sketching instrument or as a show. Sir See also:Isaac See also:Newton, in his Opticks (1704), explains the principle of the camera obscura with single convex lens and its analogy with vision in illustration of his seventh See also:axiom, which aptly embodies the correct solution of Aristotle's old problem. He also made great use of the simple dark chamber for his optical experiments with prisms, &c.

See also:

Joseph See also:Priestley (1772) mentions the application of the solar See also:microscope, both to the small and portable and the large camera obscura. Many patterns of these two forms for sketching and for viewing surrounding scenes are described in W. J. 's Gravesande's Essai de perspective (1711), Robert See also:Smith's Compleat See also:System of Optics (1738), Joseph Harris's Treatise on Optics (1775), See also:Charles See also:Hutton's Philosophical and Mathematical See also:Dictionary, and other books on optics and physics of that See also:period. The camera obscura was first applied to photography (q.v.) probably about 1794, by See also:Thomas See also:Wedgwood. His experiments with Sir See also:Humphrey See also:Davy in endeavouring to See also:fix the images of natural objects as seen in the camera were published in 1802 (Journ. See also:Roy. Inst.). (J.

End of Article: CAMERA OBSCURA

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