Camera Obscura

In 1490, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) supposedly made the first recorded drawing of a camera obscura and its operation in his Codex Atlanticus (1478-1518 c.)  He was presumably aware of how an artist could use this contraption in order to chronicle real-life by drawing the image projected by the camera obscura.  However, because da Vinci wrote with his less-dominant hand, and backwards, it took about 300 years before anyone managed to decode his inspirations and confer proper credit for them.  When his thoughts were finally deciphered, it turned out that his words were as beautiful as his paintings and works in marble.  He wrote of the camera obscura,

"Who would believe that so small a space could contain the image of all the universe?  O mighty process!"

* Christopher James, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes, Delmar Cengage Learning, 2007