A Latin term that means "dark room" or perhaps "dark chamber." A camera obscura is a device used by early artists (centuries before Christ) to display a scene on the wall of an oth [..]

This is an optical device which is the ancestor of modern cameras. From the 17th century onwards some artists used it as an aid to plotting compositions. Essentially the camera obscura consisted of a [..]

A darkened enclosure in which images of outside objects are projected through a small aperture or lens onto a facing surface. A camera obscura uses the same principles as a regular camera.

means "dark room" in Latin. Created in the mid-Sixteenth century, this precursor of cameras we know today created projected light pictures within a dark room by permitting no light t [..]

An optical device, it is usually a box with a small peephole through which an object outside is reflected by a double convex lens onto a surface. From there, the image can be traced, and if desired, m [..]

 - A system of lenses and mirrors developed from the 16th to the 17th centuries, which functioned as a primitive camera for artists. With the camera obscura, painters could project the scene in front [..]

A camera obscura is an optical device which eventually led to the invention of both photography and the photographic camera. The invention consists of a box with a hole in one side. Light from an exte [..]

1725, "a darkened room;" c. 1730, "a device for project pictures;" see camera.

An optical device that came into use during the Renaissance. It consists of a box or a darkened room with an opening on one side projecting an image on to the facing side. It was used by Old Masters

Ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means "dark chamber," and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a sing [..]

origin of the present day camera. In its simplest form it consisted of a darkened room with a small hole in one wall. Light rays could pass through the hole to transmit on to a screen, and inverted im [..]

precursor of the photographic camera. A dark room into which light entered through a single, extremely small hole (aperture), causing an image to appear on the opposite wall, which showed the scene ou [..]