Mo Ti

How It Works

The Pinhole Effect

Mozi (Mo Ti)

The pinhole effect is how the camera obscura records light. Mozi figured out that he could record the light around the shadow if he put a small pinhole into a piece of paper. This is why the camera obscura has a small hole on the front where it records the light. This would put a negative image on the paper. The original image was negative because it records the light, while the subject is actually the shadow.

https://www.google.com/search?q=camera+obscura&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj22Nf3sNTPAhUri1QKHc70CzQQ_AUICCgB&biw=1440&bih=826#imgrc=-MLoDGd6PyJJlM%3A

Mo Ti

The Camera Obscura and Mozi's Contributions

Without Mo Ti, photography would not be as advanced as it is today. This is because he was the inventor of the camera obscura, the first camera that actually resulted in a photograph.

Mozi was a Chinese Philosopher who was born in Tengzhou, China in 470 BC and died in Tengzhou in 391 BC. Mozi was an ancient philosopher who had many followers that were called technicians, or craftspeople. Mozi's specialty was Mohism, and he was also the founder of the Mohism School. There seem to be no records kept on his family, but he did have a close friend, Chuang Chou, who helped him with his invention, the camera obscura. The camera obscura is the first camera that could actually record an image onto paper.

The camera obscura was the first camera that could record an image. This later turned into film cameras, digital cameras, and mirrorless cameras, but those all started with the obscura. Mozi invented the camera obscura with his close friend, and partner, Chuang Chou. What drove them to create this was actually shadows. They had a philosophy that shadows only moved when they were moved around in light, and they wanted to see if they could record this light. They figured out something called the pinhole effect, which I will go over in more detail.

Chuang Chou

Chuang Chou, or Chuang Tzu, was also an ancient Chinese Philosopher. His works with Mozi lead to the camera obscura. They were interested in shadows, and they had a philosophy about them, which is now a science. They held a rod in front of a light source and noticed the changes in shape as they moved the rod in different ways. This lead them to actually record the light of this shadow, which lead to the first photograph.

Camera Obscura

http://totallyhistory.com/mozi/

https://www.google.com/search?q=camera+obscura&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj22Nf3sNTPAhUri1QKHc70CzQQ_AUICCgB&biw=1440&bih=826#imgrc=QZKBIefq_-HZuM%3A

An Inventor With an Image in Mind

Thesis From Inquiry Project and Support

The camera has changed at about the same pace as most technology we now have, considering the fact that we just have to push one button and it results in an image we can store anywhere and keep forever.

I support this thesis statement because it is accurate. After viewing this Prezi, you will see how the camera, and photography in general has changed very drastically since the first camera. The first camera was big and bulky, wouldn't produce a positively exposed image, and didn't have permanent images. Cameras now are small and portable, give us a positive exposure, images are digital but can be printed into a permanent photo, and the images now have color, unlike the old cameras that only gave black and white. The contributions of Mozi help support this, too, because he started with an idea and turned it into the next thing which was actually recording images