What is the legacy of the camera obscura?

Answer 1

The camera obscura was a dark box with a lens fixed into a hole on one side. This lens would let light through and focus it on the opposite wall of the box, showing a flipped but focused projection of the outside world on the wall. Artists would use this to create a precise and completely true-to-life drawing or painting of the world before chemists/photographers were able to create an image that was fixed onto a surface. This was one of the many early attempts at capturing images that were exactly like reality, and was the first in the long line of "photographic" technology.