Prehistory to 500 BC: Possible inspiration for prehistoric art and possible use in religious ceremonies, gnomons There are theories that occurrences of
camera obscura effects (through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide) inspired
paleolithic cave paintings. Distortions in the shapes of animals in many paleolithic cave artworks might be inspired by distortions seen when the surface on which an image was projected was not straight or not in the right angle. It is also suggested that
camera obscura projections could have played a role in
Neolithic structures. during the solstice on 21 June 2012 Perforated
gnomons projecting a pinhole image of the sun were described in the Chinese
Zhoubi Suanjing writings (1046 BC–256 BC with material added until ). The location of the bright circle can be measured to tell the time of day and year. In Middle Eastern and European cultures its invention was much later attributed to Egyptian astronomer and mathematician
Ibn Yunus around 1000 AD.
500 BC to 500 AD: Earliest written observations on the ground One of the earliest known written records of a pinhole image is found in the Chinese text called
Mozi, dated to the 4th century BC, traditionally ascribed to and named for
Mozi (), a
Chinese philosopher and the founder of
Mohist School of Logic. These writings explain how the image in a "collecting-point" or "treasure house" is inverted by an intersecting point (pinhole) that collects the (rays of) light. Light coming from the foot of an illuminated person gets partly hidden below (i.e., strikes below the pinhole) and partly forms the top of the image. Rays from the head are partly hidden above (i.e., strike above the pinhole) and partly form the lower part of the image. Another early account is provided by
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), or possibly a follower of his ideas. Similar to the later 11th-century Middle Eastern scientist
Alhazen, Aristotle is also thought to have used
camera obscura for observing
solar eclipses. Later versions of the text, like
Ignazio Danti's 1573 annotated translation, would add a description of the
camera obscura principle to demonstrate Euclid's ideas.
500 to 1000: Earliest experiments, study of light In the 6th century, the
Byzantine-Greek mathematician and architect
Anthemius of Tralles (most famous as a co-architect of the
Hagia Sophia) experimented with effects related to the
camera obscura. Anthemius had a sophisticated understanding of the involved optics, as demonstrated by a light-ray diagram he constructed in 555 AD. In his optical treatise
De Aspectibus,
Al-Kindi () wrote about pinhole images to prove that light travels in straight lines. In the
10th century Yu Chao-Lung supposedly projected images of pagoda models through a small hole onto a screen to study directions and divergence of rays of light.
1000 to 1400: Optical and astronomical tool 's observations of light's behaviour through a pinhole . Light enters a dark box through a small hole and creates an inverted image on the wall opposite the hole. Middle Eastern
physicist Ibn al-Haytham (known in the West by the Latinised Alhazen) (965–1040) extensively studied the
camera obscura phenomenon in the early 11th century. In his treatise "On the shape of the eclipse" he provided the first experimental and mathematical analysis of the phenomenon. He understood the relationship between the
focal point and the pinhole. In his
Book of Optics (circa 1027), Ibn al-Haytham explained that rays of light travel in straight lines and are distinguished by the body that reflected the rays, writing: Latin translations of the
Book of Optics from about 1200 onward seemed very influential in Europe. Among those Ibn al-Haytham is thought to have inspired are
Witelo,
John Peckham,
Roger Bacon,
Leonardo da Vinci,
René Descartes and
Johannes Kepler. However,
On the shape of the eclipse remained exclusively available in Arabic until the 20th century and no comparable explanation was found in Europe before Kepler addressed it. It were actually al-Kindi's work and especially the widely circulated pseudo-
Euclidean
De Speculis that were cited by the early scholars who were interested in pinhole images. Shen Kuo also responded to a statement of
Duan Chengshi in
Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written in about 840 that the inverted image of a
Chinese pagoda tower beside a seashore, was inverted because it was reflected by the sea: "This is nonsense. It is a normal principle that the image is inverted after passing through the small hole." English philosopher and Franciscan friar
Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20 – c. 1292) falsely stated in his
De Multiplicatione Specerium (1267) that an image projected through a square aperture was round because light would travel in spherical waves and therefore assumed its natural shape after passing through a hole. He is also credited with a manuscript that advised to study solar eclipses safely by observing the rays passing through some round hole and studying the spot of light they form on a surface. Polish friar, theologian, physicist, mathematician and natural philosopher
Vitello wrote about the
camera obscura in his influential treatise
Perspectiva (circa 1270–1278), which was largely based on Ibn al-Haytham's work. English archbishop and scholar
John Peckham (circa 1230 – 1292) wrote about the
camera obscura in his
Tractatus de Perspectiva (circa 1269–1277) and
Perspectiva communis (circa 1277–79), falsely arguing that light gradually forms the circular shape after passing through the aperture. His writings were influenced by Bacon. French astronomer Guillaume de Saint-Cloud suggested in his 1292 work
Almanach Planetarum that the eccentricity of the Sun could be determined with the
camera obscura from the inverse proportion between the distances and the apparent solar diameters at apogee and perigee.
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1267–1319) described in his 1309 work
Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (
The Revision of the Optics) how he experimented with a glass sphere filled with water in a
camera obscura with a controlled aperture and found that the colors of the rainbow are phenomena of the decomposition of light. French Jewish philosopher, mathematician, physicist and astronomer/astrologer
Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344) (also known as Gersonides or Leo de Balneolis) made several astronomical observations using a
camera obscura with a
Jacob's staff, describing methods to measure the angular diameters of the Sun, the Moon and the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. He determined the eccentricity of the Sun based on his observations of the summer and winter solstices in 1334. Levi also noted how the size of the aperture determined the size of the projected image. He wrote about his findings in Hebrew in his treatise
Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem (
The Wars of the Lord) Book V Chapters 5 and 9.
1450 to 1600: Depiction, lenses, drawing aid, mirrors Italian polymath
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), familiar with the work of Alhazen in Latin translation and having extensively studied the physics and physiological aspects of optics, wrote the oldest known clear description of the
camera obscura, in 1502 (found in the
Codex Atlanticus, translated from Latin): These descriptions, however, would remain unknown until Venturi deciphered and published them in 1797. Da Vinci was clearly very interested in the
camera obscura: over the years he drew approximately 270 diagrams of the
camera obscura in his notebooks. He systematically experimented with various shapes and sizes of apertures and with multiple apertures (1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 24, 28 and 32). He compared the working of the eye to that of the
camera obscura and seemed especially interested in its capability of demonstrating basic principles of optics: the inversion of images through the pinhole or pupil, the non-interference of images and the fact that images are "all in all and all in every part". The oldest known published drawing of a
camera obscura is found in Dutch physician, mathematician and instrument maker
Gemma Frisius’ 1545 book
De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica, in which he described and illustrated how he used the
camera obscura to study the solar eclipse of 24 January 1544 after Johannes Kepler had published similar findings of his own. Italian polymath
Giambattista della Porta described the
camera obscura, which he called "
camera obscura", in the 1558 first edition of his book series
Magia Naturalis. He suggested to use a convex lens to project the image onto paper and to use this as a drawing aid. Della Porta compared the human eye to the
camera obscura: "For the image is let into the eye through the eyeball just as here through the window". The popularity of Della Porta's books helped spread knowledge of the
camera obscura. In his 1567 work
La Pratica della Perspettiva Venetian nobleman
Daniele Barbaro (1513-1570) described using a
camera obscura with a biconvex lens as a drawing aid and points out that the picture is more vivid if the lens is covered as much as to leave a circumference in the middle. In his influential and meticulously annotated Latin edition of the works of Ibn al-Haytham and Witelo, (1572), German mathematician
Friedrich Risner proposed a portable
camera obscura drawing aid; a lightweight wooden hut with lenses in each of its four walls that would project images of the surroundings on a paper cube in the middle. The construction could be carried on two wooden poles. A very similar setup was illustrated in 1645 in
Athanasius Kircher's influential book
Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae. Around 1575 Italian Dominican priest, mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer
Ignazio Danti designed a
camera obscura gnomon and a meridian line for the
Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and he later had a massive gnomon built in the
San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. The gnomon was used to study the movements of the Sun during the year and helped in determining the new Gregorian calendar for which Danti took place in the commission appointed by
Pope Gregorius XIII and instituted in 1582. In his 1585 book
Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum Venetian mathematician
Giambattista Benedetti proposed to use a mirror in a 45-degree angle to project the image upright. This leaves the image reversed, but would become common practice in later
camera obscura boxes.
1600 to 1650: Name coined, camera obscura telescopy, portable drawing aid in tents and boxes , in his first treatise about optics,
Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604) Kepler discovered the working of the
camera obscura by recreating its principle with a book replacing a shining body and sending threads from its edges through a many-cornered aperture in a table onto the floor where the threads recreated the shape of the book. He also realized that images are "painted" inverted and reversed on the retina of the eye and figured that this is somehow corrected by the brain. In 1607, Kepler studied the Sun in his
camera obscura and noticed a
sunspot, but he thought it was Mercury transiting the Sun. In his 1611 book
Dioptrice, Kepler described how the projected image of the
camera obscura can be improved and reverted with a lens. It is believed he later used a telescope with three lenses to revert the image in the
camera obscura. In 1612, Italian mathematician
Benedetto Castelli wrote to his mentor, the Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician
Galileo Galilei about projecting images of the Sun through a
telescope (invented in 1608) to study the recently discovered sunspots. Galilei wrote about Castelli's technique to the German Jesuit priest, physicist, and astronomer Christoph Scheiner. For his helioscope studies, Scheiner built a box around the viewing/projecting end of the telescope, which can be seen as the oldest known version of a box-type
camera obscura. Scheiner also made a portable
camera obscura. In his 1613 book
Opticorum Libri Sex Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist, and architect
François d'Aguilon described how some charlatans cheated people out of their money by claiming they knew
necromancy and would raise the specters of the devil from hell to show them to the audience inside a dark room. The image of an assistant with a devil's mask was projected through a lens into the dark room, scaring the uneducated spectators. Dutch inventor
Cornelis Drebbel is thought to have constructed a box-type
camera obscura which corrected the inversion of the projected image. In 1622, he sold one to the Dutch poet, composer, and diplomat
Constantijn Huygens who used it to paint and recommended it to his artist friends. This
universal joint mechanism was later called a
scioptic ball. In his 1637 book
Dioptrique French philosopher, mathematician and scientist
René Descartes suggested placing an eye of a recently dead man (or if a dead man was unavailable, the eye of an ox) into an opening in a darkened room and scraping away the flesh at the back until one could see the inverted image formed on the retina. Italian Jesuit philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer
Mario Bettini wrote about making a
camera obscura with twelve holes in his
Apiaria universae philosophiae mathematicae (1642). When a foot soldier would stand in front of the camera, a twelve-person army of soldiers making the same movements would be projected. French mathematician,
Minim friar, and painter of
anamorphic art Jean-François Nicéron (1613–1646) wrote about the
camera obscura with convex lenses. He explained how the
camera obscura could be used by painters to achieve perfect perspective in their work. He also complained how charlatans abused the
camera obscura to fool witless spectators and make them believe that the projections were magic or occult science. These writings were published in a posthumous version of
La Perspective Curieuse (1652).
1650 to 1800: Introduction of the magic lantern, popular portable box-type drawing aid, painting aid The use of the
camera obscura to project special shows to entertain an audience seems to have remained very rare. A description of what was most likely such a show in 1656 in France, was penned by the poet
Jean Loret, who expressed how rare and novel it was. The Parisian society were presented with upside-down images of palaces, ballet dancing and battling with swords. Loret felt somewhat frustrated that he did not know the secret that made this spectacle possible. There are several clues that this may have been a
camera obscura show, rather than a very early
magic lantern show, especially in the upside-down image and Loret's surprise that the energetic movements made no sound. German Jesuit scientist
Gaspar Schott heard from a traveler about a small
camera obscura device he had seen in Spain, which one could carry under one arm and could be hidden under a coat. He then constructed his own sliding box
camera obscura, which could focus by sliding a wooden box part fitted inside another wooden box part. He wrote about this in his 1657
Magia universalis naturæ et artis (volume 1 – book 4 "Magia Optica" pages 199–201). By 1659 the
magic lantern was introduced and partly replaced the
camera obscura as a projection device, while the
camera obscura mostly remained popular as a drawing aid. The magic lantern can be regarded as a (box-type)
camera obscura device that projects images rather than actual scenes. In 1668,
Robert Hooke described the difference for an installation to project the delightful "various apparitions and disappearances, the motions, changes and actions" by means of a broad convex-glass in a
camera obscura setup: "if the picture be transparent, reflect the rays of the sun so as that they may pass through it towards the place where it is to be represented; and let the picture be encompassed on every side with a board or cloth that no rays may pass beside it. If the object be a statue or some living creature, then it must be very much enlightened by casting the sun beams on it by refraction, reflexion, or both." For models that can't be inverted, like living animals or candles, he advised: "let two large glasses of convenient spheres be placed at appropriate distances". The 17th century
Dutch Masters, such as
Johannes Vermeer, were known for their magnificent attention to detail. It has been widely speculated that they made use of the
camera obscura,
Johann Zahn's
Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium, published in 1685, contains many descriptions, diagrams, illustrations and sketches of both the
camera obscura and the
magic lantern. A hand-held device with a mirror-reflex mechanism was first proposed by
Johann Zahn in 1685, a design that would later be used in photographic cameras. The scientist Robert Hooke presented a paper in 1694 to the Royal Society, in which he described a portable
camera obscura. It was a cone-shaped box which fit onto the head and shoulders of its user. From the beginning of the 18th century, craftsmen and opticians would make
camera obscura devices in the shape of books, which were much appreciated by lovers of optical devices. By the 18th century, following developments by
Robert Boyle and
Robert Hooke, more easily portable models in boxes became available. These were extensively used by amateur artists while on their travels, but they were also employed by professionals, including
Paul Sandby and
Joshua Reynolds, whose camera (disguised as a book) is now in the
Science Museum in London. Such cameras were later adapted by
Joseph Nicephore Niepce,
Louis Daguerre and
William Fox Talbot for creating the first photographs. . 18th century ==Role in the modern age==