system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How was the first camera made? How did the inventor come up with the idea and what parts and procedures were used?
gpt
So technically a camera is anything that captures an image, it doesn't have to preserve it. The first cameras were just pinholes. We don't know when the first time someone realized light worked that way, but the first record we have is a book on optics by an Arab physicist in 1021. He also figured out that smaller holes made sharper images, but needed more light.

The first captured image was in the early 1800s. They knew that silver oxide turned dark when exposed to light, so someone tried it with a pinhole camera and it captured the image. They didn't know how to make silver oxide stop turning dark, so his picture wasn't permanent; as it was exposed to more light, it eventually turned all black.

Through the 1800s, other processes were developed (no pun intended) for making a permanent image, but that's really just refinement of the idea.