When was the first film camera invented?

If you lived in the 19th century and wanted to take a photo, you would have to spend a lot of time and effort. The first cameras ran on glass plates, were bulky, difficult to use, and required near-laboratory conditions for developing images. But things changed when the first film camera came along.

1888 was a revolutionary year in photography thanks to the American inventor George Eastman. It was he who created the first commercial film camera, which was named Kodak. The main innovation was that instead of heavy and brittle glass plates, it used roll photographic film. This made photography accessible not only to professionals, but also to ordinary people.

The first Kodak had a simple principle of operation: the user bought a camera already charged with 100 frames of film. After use, it had to be sent to the Kodak factory, where the film was developed, photos were printed and new film was charged. The slogan of the company was simple and clear: "You press the – button we do the rest".

Before Kodak, photographers used daguerreotype and collodion process techniques that required considerable time to create an image. In 1871, Richard Leach Maddox developed dry photographic plates, which greatly facilitated the process, but the real breakthrough came from the invention of photographic film.

In 1885, Eastman began experiments on creating a paper-based roll film, and in 1889 he improved it by making it based on nitrocellulose. This marked the beginning of the era of film photography.

Kodak's invention pioneered mass photography. If earlier the photo was a luxury available only to the rich or professionals, now everyone could buy the camera. In the 20th century, the development of photography led to the appearance of compact models, such as the legendary Leica (1925) and the massive Kodak Brownie, which cemented the popularity of film photography.