Sutton Panoramic Camera, c 1861

For many years now, the camera has been a very important piece of technology, and is constantly being updated. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first photograph in the year 1814. He achieved this by coating a pewter plate with bitumen and exposing the plate to light. The bitumen hardened where it was struck by light, and the unhardened areas dissolved away. Since then, the camera has been updated many size. The updates the camera has received include, a smaller size and a lot more features. The features that were included were to “modernize,” the camera, so to speak.

The Sutton panoramic camera, although not the first camera invented, was the camera that was used in 1861, and was the camera that was used to photograph Abraham Lincoln. The year 1861 was the year that the first known permanent color photograph was taken. That color photograph was taken by a man James Clerk Maxwell, who had a lot of scientific background and worked a lot with color and photograph. The Panoramic cameras were held within a wooden casing, which incorporated the Sutton lens, including the curved photographic plates, plate holder, and sensitizing bath. All of this was made by T Ross, in London. During the late 1850s, a man named Thomas Sutton developed the world’s first spherical photographic lens. This lens, called the “Sutton Lens,” allowed panoramic pictures to be taken without the careful rotation of a camera on its tripod. This new wide angle lens made it possible to create panoramic images of non-static objects and was manufactured by Thomas Ross from 1861 until 1864, in London.

The photographs featured above my essay, are examples of photographs that were taken in 1861 using the Sutton Panoramic Camera. Those photographs are (starting from the left) of a woman, Abraham Lincoln during his presidency and a civil war soldier. I think that because of the way the pictures are taken, and because of the age of the photographs, it makes them quite interesting.