Technologies
Camera Obscura
KAM-er-ah ob-SKYOOR-ah
Optical Device
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A darkened chamber or box in which light through a small aperture projects an inverted image of the scene outside, described in Chinese and Greek antiquity and named by Kepler in the seventeenth century. As a drawing aid it trained centuries of eyes, and fitted with a light-sensitive plate it became the photographic camera.
Facts
OriginDescribed by Mozi in China and known to Aristotle; the Latin name, dark chamber, was popularized by Johannes Kepler in 1604. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
In Medium
The camera obscura precedes photography; it belongs here as the optical ancestor of the photographic camera.
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