It's a little hard to believe that a hundred years have passed since the first small camera was made. Already or just...
It is almost a matter of course that we pull out of our pockets telephone, when we see something beautiful. Two clicks and it's on camera, and then one more click and the photo is here! If we have some nice app for a small improvement, a few more clicks follow, and then "Send to a friend" or "Publish on Instagram". But who would have thought that this, today quite simple process, evolved from the huge and heavy black boxes that followed camera obscura and that one of the greatest breakthroughs in photography occurred in 1914 when Oskar Barnack invented Leica?
Oskar Barnack was a German optical engineer who specialized in microscope research. He was also a great photography enthusiast, but due to his poor health, he struggled to carry the heavy cameras of the time. Therefore, one day in the venerable Leitz factory in Germany to Wetzlar, where first-class microscopes have been developed since 1849, Barnack came up with an incredible idea in 1905 – he wanted to reduce the size of the negative and only in the later stages enlarge it into a photograph. Less than ten years later, he succeeded in doing so, and the photographs taken in 1914 were of exceptional quality for that time. Barnack invented the prototype Ur-Leica, which later proved to be a long-term success, but unfortunately, due to the First World War, serial production of the first Leica had to be postponed - it was started in 1924, and a year later it was presented to the general public.
To photographers then a stone probably rolled away from the heart, because they were finally able to get rid of cumbersome tripods and other impossible machinery that we cannot even imagine today. With Barnack's sensational small format camera, photo reporters were able to get closer to actual events and tell stories from more dynamic and authentic perspectives. Leica has become an indispensable companion in all situations, an integral part of the eye or an extended human hand. By 1932, 90,000 people had their own Leica 1961 however, the number skyrocketed – as many as one million cameras were in use.
