World's first Camera- Information and Images

The history of the camera can be traced much further back than the introduction of photography. Cameras evolved from the camera obscura, and continued to change through many generations of photographic technology, including daguerreotypes, calotypes, dry plates, film, and to the modern day with digital cameras.

 This Photo circulating via social media and the internet purports to depict the the world's first camera. But the question is Which camera took a picture of the world’s first camera?

the answer is that the camera in picture is the world’s largest camera built in 1900, by the photographer by George R. Lawrence. He was commissioned by the Chicago & Alton Railway to shoot the world’s largest photo of one of its trains a photo measuring 8 feet by 4.5 feet. The camera weighed 900 pounds, required 15 men to move and operate, and cost a whopping $5,000 enough money back then to buy a large house.

so the camera in the picture isn't the world's first camera but the world’s largest camera. 

"The first camera that was small and portable enough to be practical for photography was envisioned by Johann Zahn in 1685" 

So essentially, the first camera took the picture of the first largest camera.

And this is the drawing of artist using the first 18th century camera to trace an image.