We all know what a
camera is
, but perhaps we would be surprised to learn that we “
borrowed it from the English camera, itself a specialist borrowing in the vocabulary of optics, in the 17th century. , from the Latin camera, which gave "room".
The English word appears in 1668 in the expression camera obscura (dark room).
»(Source: Alain Rey,
Historical Dictionary of the French Language
)
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Camera obscura
Ancestor of the photographic
camera
, the
camera obscura
is a black box of variable size where, on one of the walls, a small hole has been drilled to let light through.
On the face opposite the hole, projects the inverted image of what is on the other side of the hole outside the box.
Read alsoAgenda, this Latin word for everyday life
In 1514, Leonardo da Vinci explains: “
By letting the images of illuminated objects enter through a small hole in a very dark room, you will then intercept these images on a white sheet placed in this room.
[…] But they will be smaller and overturned
”.
Bright room
The word appeared in French in 1838 in the expression c
amera lucida
(clear chamber, optical process now abandoned).
With the advent of cinema, the word was borrowed again from the Anglo-American
movie camera
.
From
Give Us Our Daily Latin
.
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