Chinese and Greek philosophers describe the basic principles of optics and the camera

c.330BC
The first casual reference to the optic laws that made pinhole cameras possible, was observed and noted by Aristotle around 330 BC, who questioned why the sun could make a circular image when it shined through a square hole.

c.1000
Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), a great authority on optics in the Middle Ages who lived around 1000AD, invented the first pinhole camera, (also called the Camera Obscura} and was able to explain why the images were upside down. (Show 1519 drawing of a camera obscura by leonardo da vinci.)

1490
Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first detailed description of camera obscura in his Atlantic Codex, a 1,286 page collection of drawings and writings. The principle of camera obscura involves punching a hole in a dark box and putting a piece of light-sensitive material on the other side thereby providing a photograph. The first picture of a pinhole camera obscura is a drawing by Gemma Frisus' De Radio, an astronomer (above photo on the left). He used the pinhole in his darkened room to study the solar eclipse of 1544.
1558

Giovanni Battista della Porta illustrated camera principles in his book "Natural Magic".

1568

 

1604

Johannes Kepler  coined the phrase Camera Obscura . 

1609

Kepler further suggested the use of a lens to improve the image projected by a Camera Obscura.

1664-1666

1801
Thomas Young Suggested that the retina at the back of the eye contains three types of color sensitive  receptor, one sensitive to blue light, one to green and one to red. The brain interprets various combinations of these colors to form any other color in the visible spectrum.

1802
Thomas Wedgewood is the first person to attempt to record the camera image by means of the action of light  (he is successful in recording the image in organic substances such as the darkening silver nitrate on white leather or paper when exposed however he is unable to find a way to make these images permanent or "stop" the darkening permanently)

1814
Joseph Niepce achieves first photographic image with camera obscura - however, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded.

1825

This photograph was only discovered in 2002 and is now known to be the very first permanent photograph ever taken by Nicéphore Niépce – the father of photography. It is an image of an engraving of a man walking a horse and it was made using a technique known as heliogravure. The method involves a piece of copper covered with light sensitive bitumen. This metal plate is exposed to light and creates an image which is then transferred to paper. The image has been declared a national treasure by the French government and it sold for $392,000 at auction to the French National Library.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/niepce.jpg

1832
Animated photos start to be viewed in the phenakistascope and similar devices (animations using successive images or drawings)

1835
Invention of the Paper-Negative Process

Talbot sensitized paper to light with a silver salt solution. He then exposed the paper to light. The background became black, and the subject was rendered in gradations of grey. This was a negative image, and from the paper negative, Talbot made contact prints, reversing the light and shadows to create a detailed picture. In 1841, he perfected this paper-negative process and called it a calotype, Greek for beautiful picture.

http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/q/3/1/calotype.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/William_Henry_Fox_Talbot%2C_by_John_Moffat%2C_1864.jpg/474px-William_Henry_Fox_Talbot%2C_by_John_Moffat%2C_1864.jpg

1837
Louis Daguerre's first daguerreotype - the first image that was fixed and did not fade and needed under thirty minutes of light exposure.

1838
Sir Charles Wheatstone described the theory of stereoscopic vision and his invention of the stereoscope to the Royal Society.

1839
First use of the term "Photography"

1839
Invention of the Daguerreotype

Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.

1840
First lens designed specifically for photographic purposes by Petzval

1840
Ackermann & Co., (the leading print seller and purveyor of "Colours and Requisites for Drawing" advertised a "Photogenic Drawing Box" (was not called a camera) complete with chemichals for sensitizing paper and an instruction booklet for making prints.

1840
First American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera.

1851
Invention of the Wet Plate Negative Process

1856
Invention of the Tintype Photographic Process

1859
Panoramic camera patented - the Sutton.

1861

1861
First Color Photograph

The enormously influential Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell creates a rudimentary color image by superimposing onto a single screen three black-and-white images each passed through three filters—red, green, and blue. His photo of a multicolored ribbon is the first to prove the efficacy of the three-color method, until then just a theory, and sets the stage for further color innovation, particularly by the Lumißre brothers in France. 

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/733px-tartan-ribbon.jpg

1871
Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately.

1877
First Color Landscape

This photograph was taken by Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron who invented the subtractive (cyan, magenta, and yellow) color method of taking photographs. Louis was a French pioneer in color photography and he worked in both subtractive and additive (red, green, and blue) color. This particularly photograph is called “Landscape of Southern France”.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/800px-duhauron1877-1.jpg

1878
First High Speed Series

English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, using new emulsions that allow nearly instantaneous photography, begins taking photograph sequences that capture animals and humans in motion. His 1878 photo series of a galloping horse, created with 12 cameras each outfitted with a trip wire, helps settle a disagreement over whether at any time in a horse's gait all four hooves leave the ground. (They do.) It also causes a popular stir about the potential of cameras to study movement. Muybridge goes on to create hundreds of image sequences with humans and animals as subjects. These photo series are linked to the earliest beginnings of cinematography.
Zopraxioscope image http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125899013

1879
Dry Plate Negatives and Handheld Cameras

1884
George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film.

1887
Flashlight Powder
Blitzlichtpulver or flashlight powder was invented in Germany in 1887 by Adolf Miethe and Johannes Gaedicke. Lycopodium powder (the waxy spores from club moss) was used in early flash powder.

1888

Historic films are very popular and they all attempt to recreate the period in which they are set. This film is the first celluloid film created and it gives us a true look at how people looked and, more importantly, carried themselves (in the case of the women in full corseted gowns). The film only lasts for two seconds but it is enough time to see the characters walking. It was recorded at 12 frames per second by French inventor Louis Le Prince. It was filmed at the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England on October 14 and the people who appear are Adophe Le Prince (Louis’s son), Sarah Whitley, Joseph Whitley, and Harriet Hartley. Ten days after filming, Sarah Whitley (Le Prince’s mother-in-law) died. Two years later Le Prince vanished mysteriously from a train traveling between Dijon and Paris. Another two years later, Alphonse was found shot dead in New York after testifying at a patent trial against Edison by the American Mutoscope Company.

1888
Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera.

1888
The term "Snapshots" was born (from an expression used by hunters to describe shooting a firearm from the hip without taking careful aim)

1895
Lumiere Brothers successfully project the first motion picture film as a "magic lantern" type presentation (followed by Edison in America and the explosion of the motion picture film medium)
Is this accurate? (http://impresssnow.com/349/349_lecture04.html)
http://www.victorian-cinema.net/cinematographe2.jpg
http://www.victorian-cinema.net/machines.htm

1896
The first X-Ray photo is taken when Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen noticed that a bit of barium platinocyanide emitted a fluorescent glow. He then laid a photographic plate behind his wifeÕs hand. Previously, physicians were unable to look inside a personÕs body without making an incision. Roentgen was the recipient of the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901

1898
Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

1900
First mass-marketed camera—the Brownie. The Brownie is given credit for creating the hobby of photography as an American national pastime early in the 20th Century.  The film was loaded into a removable film carrier/exposure chamber that slid into the back of the camera.
http://historyforkids.utah.gov/fun_and_games/photos/images/browniecamera.jpg

1914
First 35mm still camera developed. (Ur Leica)

1925
The flashbulb is patented by Paul Vierkotter to replace flash powder (noisy and smoky stuff)

1927
General Electric invents the modern flash bulb. (Sashalight??)

1930
On September 23, 1930, the first commercially available photoflash bulb was patented by German, Johannes Ostermeier. These flashbulbs were named the Vacublitz.

1934

All those years after the first experiments in photography, Kodak in 1934 invented 35mm film which quickly became the most popular film type and continues to be so to this day. This film was pre-loaded into rolls with perforated edges and it made it possible to load the films into cameras in broad daylight. The film size was already in use in movie films, but it was not until Kodak made the still version in 1934 and Leica the first cameras to use it, that is moved into the world of still photography. The first 33mm still camera cost $175 (equal to around $3,000 today).

1938

Chester Carlson invents "electron photography," which later comes to be known as xerography, or simply photocopying.

Electrophotography (Xerography) was invented by Chester F. Carlson.  While others sought chemical or photographic solutions to instant copying problems, Carlson turned to electrostatics and in 1938 succeeded in obtaining his first dry-copy, and the first of many patents two years later.  It took presentations to more than 20 companies before Carlson was able to interest the Battelle Development Corporation in his invention in 1944.  In 1947 the Haloid Company, later renamed Xerox Corporation, negotiated commercial rights to his xerographic development.  Eleven years later, and just 10 years before his death in 1968, Xerox introduced its first office copier.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/10/dayintech_1022#

1938
First High-Speed Photography Images

1946
Zoomar introduces the zoom lens, the invention of American Frank Back.

1948
Polaroid Cameras

1957
First Digitally Scanned Photograph

Technically, this is the very first digital photograph – all these years later, digital cameras are only just beginning to have the full capabilities of film cameras. Russell Kirsch was a computer pioneer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the USA when he developed the system by which a camera could be fed into a computer. The photo is of Kirsch’s three month old son Walden and it measured a mere 176×176 pixels. Baby Walden now works in communications for Intel.

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/469px-nbsfirstscanimage.jpg

1957

Lennart Nilsson begins using an endoscope to photograph the inside of the human body.  His most provocative image was the first ever photograph of a human fetus in the womb. At first, no one was able to believe this image was a real photograph.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/odyssey/nilsson.html

1963

Kodak introduces the Instamatic line, the first point-and-shoot cameras.

1969

(Image at bottom of page) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2009/smith-photo.html?print=1

1974
The  first CCD flatbed scanner was introduced by Kurzweil Computer  Products using the first CCD integrated chip, a 500 sensor  linear array from Fairchild.

1975
Eastman Kodak created the prototype for the world's first digital camera. Created by Steve Sasson, the device was never intended to be mass produced and used CCD image sensor technology.
http://www.kodak.com/US/images/en/corp/1000nerds/steveSasson/1_Camera.jpg

1978
Konica introduces first point-and-shoot, autofocus camera.

1980
Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder. (To be sold as the Sony BMC100p)

1981
Sony demonstrates Mavica "still video" camera which recorded images as magnetic impulses on a  compact two-inch still-video floppy disk. The images were captured on the  disk by using two CCD (charge-coupled device) chips. One chip stored  luminance information and the other separately recorded the chrominance information. This camera provided a 720,000-pixel image. The images could  be stored on the floppy disk either in Frame or Field mode. When the  photographer selected the Frame mode, the sensor recorded each picture on  two tracks. Up to 25 images could be recorded on each disk.

1983
Kodak introduces Disc camera, using an 8x11mm frame (the same as in the Minox spy camera). In one way or another, these Disc cameras formed the basis for digital  imaging as they are not entirely considered as conventional film-based cameras.

1984
Digital Camera

1986
Disposable Cameras

1990
Eastman Kodak announces Photo CD as a digital image storage medium.

1990
Adobe releases Photoshop 1.0, an image manipulation program for Apple Macintosh computers
http://photoshopnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ps-1-box.jpg

1990
The Hubble's workhorse instrument is the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and captured most of the most famous Hubble pictures.  It observes just about everything, recording extremely sharp images of faraway objects in relatively broad views.  Its 48 filters allow scientists to study precise wavelengths of light and to sense a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.  WFPC2 doesn't use film to record its images.  Instead, four postage stamp-sized pieces of high-tech Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) collect information from stars and galaxies to make photographs.  These detectors are very sensitive to the extremely faint light of distant galaxies.  They can see objects that are a billion times fainter than the naked eye can see.  Less sensitive CCDs are now in some videocassette recorders and all of the new digital cameras.  CCDs are electronic circuits composed of light-sensitive picture elements (pixels).  Each of the four Hubble CCDs contains 640,000 pixels.  The light collected by each pixel is translated into a number.  These numbers (all 2,560,000 of them) are sent to ground-based computers, which convert them into an image. NASA

1991
First Digital Still Camera Sold

1992
JPEG, a compression becomes standard for storing and sending photographic images over the Internet, is described in a paper published in "IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics."

1993
Apple Quicktake digital camera announced (developed jointly with Kodak). It was the first consumer level digital camera It boasts 640x480 (0.3 MP) resolution, a built-in flash, and could store 8 photos in its internal memory. It connected to an Apple Macintosh computer via a serial cable. It was 'not intended to replace film' and is notorious for devouring AA battery power quickly.
http://www.mrmartinweb.com/images/camera/digital/quicktake100.jpg

2000
The world's first camera phone released by Sharp (the J-SH04) in November: "The J-SH04 was the industry's first mobile phone to feature an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor for taking digital photos. It was followed by the industry's first application of a 65,536-color semi-transmissive TFT LCD on a flip type phone (J-SH05). Both models were supplied to J-Phone Co. Ltd., and raised Sharp's presence in the mobile phone market".

http://listverse.com/2009/01/13/top-10-incredible-early-firsts-in-photography/