The history of the single-lens reflex camera predates the invention of photography in 1826/27 by one and a half centuries with the use of a reflex mirror in a camera obscura first described in 1676. Such SLR devices were popular as drawing aids throughout the 18th century, because an artist could trace over the ground glass image to produce a true-life realistic picture.
A British patent was granted in 1861 for the first internal mirror SLR photographic camera, but the first production photographic SLR did not appear until 1884 in the U.S.
These primitive SLR cameras began to mature in the early 20th century, but their many disadvantages continued to make them unsatisfactory for general photographic use for decades. The SLR may be elegantly simple in concept, but it turned out to be fiendishly complex in practice. The SLR's shortcomings were solved one by one as optical and mechanical technology advanced and in the 1960s the SLR camera became the preferred design for many high-end camera formats. In the 1970s, the addition of electronics established an important place in the mass market for the SLR. The SLR remains the camera design of choice for most professional and ambitious amateur photographers.
Read more about History Of The Single-lens Reflex Camera: Early Large and Medium Format SLRs, Development of The 35 Mm SLR, Rise of The Japanese SLRs, General Operation of A 35 Mm SLR, Standardization of Designs, The Introduction of Light Metering, Through-the-lens Metering, The Autofocus Revolution, Consolidation To Autofocus and The Transition To Digital Photography, Medium-format SLRs, Future, Chronology
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, reflex and/or camera:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“The camera is a killing chamber, which speeds up the time it claims to be conserving. Like coffins exhumed and prised open, the photographs put on show what we were and what we will be again.”
—Peter Conrad (b. 1948)