Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Camera
Photography, once limited to travel, vacations and special occasions, has become a part of everyday life. The device for capturing photographic images or videos, called a camera, is also a term for a building. If you went to view the iconic Radcliffe Camera at Oxford College, don’t expect to see a large Leica, colossal Canon or enormous Nikon. It’s Oxford’s 250-year-old library, a spectacular circular structure that, ironically, is one of the most photographed buildings in the world. In America, we have a bicameral legislative system, so called because it is divided into two chambers or houses.
Camera is Latin for “room,” which came from the Greeks, to whom a kamara was any architectural feature with an arched top. The word for the device that takes pictures came into English in 1708 when the first picture camera was called a “camera obscura,” Latin for “dark room.” The early camera was basically a large enclosed box, dark except for a pin hole in one side. Cameras eventually evolved from the camera obscura to include daguerreotypes, dry plates and film to modern-day digital cameras and camera phones.
Early photography required a subject to stay still for a long period because of the long exposure time needed. It often involved the use of a head brace for support in portraits. The inability to hold a smile for a long session without moving tended to result in grim looking images.
Hasselblad was the first camera on the moon, and was used by all of the Apollo missions. Apollo 11 took 12 Hasselblad cameras to document their historic moon landing. The film was brought back, but the cameras were left behind to make room for rock samples. A dozen Hasselblads are still on the moon.
In 1975, the first digital camera, the size of a toaster and weighing eight pounds, was produced.
Because of the universal presence of digital cameras on phones today, it’s estimated that we snap more pictures every two minutes than the whole of humanity did in the 1800s. In 1999, Kodak reported that we had taken approximately 80 billion pictures. Today we share 730 billion images a year on Facebook alone! The 21st century is being documented in selfies, cute pets and pictures of food.
