CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF FORENSIC
PHOTOGRAPHY
Alhazen (965-1039)
An Arabian Scholar who found out that
the light entering a small hole on the wall
or shuttered window of darkened room
cast an upside down picture of the scene
outside onto the opposite wall.
Joseph nicephore niepce (1765-1833)
Put a plate coated with bitumen in a camera obscura.
He put the camera obscura facing his house for eight
hours and made a photograph. It is the earliest camera
photograph that we still have today
Niepce began sharing his findings with louis Jacques
mande Daguerre, an artist who owned a theatre in Paris.
They became partners three years later. Daguerr’s most
important discovery came in 1835, two years after niepce
died
HELIOGRAPHY
A forerunner to the earliest photographic process,
invented by Niepce in 1822. It entails using bitumen, a
material that hardens and becomes insoluble in light.
He hoped to use this process to transfer images to be
printed on a press.
Louis Jacques mande Daguerre
Daguerre’s (1787-1851)
process, which named the
daquerreotype, was announced to the world on
January 7, 1839. half a year later the French
government gave Daguerre and niepce’s
son,Isidore, a lifetime pensions in exchange for all
rights to their invention. The daguerreotype was
become France’s gift to the world.
DAGUERREOTYPE
The Daguerrotype photographic process was primarily a
portrait medium that was executed in a studio, announced in
1839 by Daguerre, which consisted of a copper plate coated
with silver that was highly polished. The plate was then treated
with iodine vapor and became light sensitive. It was then put in
a camera and a photograph was taken. After the plate was
developed in mercury vapor, which is highly toxic, a distinct
photographic image appeared on the polished silver surface.
SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM
HERSCHEL (1792-1871)
A British astronomer and photographic chemist.
Inspired by Daguerre and Talbot, English astronomer Sir
John Frederick William Herschel also began
experimenting with the photographic process.
He discovered that thiosulphate of soda, the chemical
now referred as “Hypo”, would fix images on
photosensitive paper by stopping the chemical action of
silver salts
Herschel is noted for his 1819 discovery of thiosulfates
and their ability to dissolve silver salts completely, which
led, 20 years later, after Daguerre and Fox Talbot
claimed invention of photography.
He suggested to both inventors that sodium thiosulfate,
or hypo, could be used as a fixing agent to wash away
the unaltered salts after the photograph was processed
The chemical, still in use and known as “fixer”, makes
photographic negatives and prints permanently.
He did not only discovered fixer, but also
coined the word photography, which comes
from the Greek word meaning “light writing”
Herschel used the term photography to
differentiate between Talbot’s negative paper
prints and Daguerre’s positive image method
that used copper plates.
FREDERICK SCOTT ARCHER (1831-1857)
In March 1851, he invented a wet-plate collodion photography or wet-
plate process now known as Archerotype, by which finely detailed glass
negatives were produced.
The process entailed using a glass plate coated with collodion that was
sensitized and used while wet.
Archer is generally accepted as the creator of the process that replaced
daguerreotypes. It was popular from about 1855 to 1880, when the dry
collodion process gained acceptance.
He reduced exposure times from minutes to seconds.
Abel niepce de saint- victor
Nephew of joseph niepce, coated a glass
plate with albumen which held the chemical
fast.
(niepcotype)
RICHARD LEACH MADDOX
An English physician who took Archer’s discovery a step
further with his “dry plate” process, which used an
emulsion or gelatin and silver bromide or a glass plate.
By 1880, collodion was replaced by gelatin, which was
used in dry plate-hence the name, dry plate photography.
For short time, there was a dry-collodion process, but it
was very slow. Dry plate usually refers to the gelatin
process.
GEORGE EASTMAN ([Link]. Kodak)(1854-1932)
An American photographic inventor and manufacturer.
The founder of Kodak Company.
He introduced the Kodak box camera in 1888 with the promotional
slogan “You press the button, we do the rest.” It was sold for $25
and came already loaded with a 20-foot roll of paper film, enough
for 100 exposures. After all frames were exposed, the user sent the
entire camera back to Eastman’s company. There, the film was
processed, printed, and the camera was loaded with a new roll, after
which it was sent back to its owner with the negatives and a set of
prints.
He gave us the flexible roll film and the daylight-
loadable camera in the late 1880s or the first “point-
and-shoot” camera.
In 1932, at the age of 78, Eastman killed himself,
leaving a note that said, “My work is done. Why
wait?
Dr. r.a. reis
German scientist who contributed heavily
to the use of photography in forensic
science and established the world’s earliest
crime laboratory that serviced the
academic community and Swiss police
Victor balthazard (1910)
He developed a method of
photographic comparison of bullets
and cartridge cases which act as an
early foundation of the fields of
ballistics
Edwin h. land
He entroduced polaroid –one-step photography
An American inventor in 1947, he invented
instant photography and introduced the first
Polaroid camera, which produced a sepia
monochrome print in just 60 seconds.