The camera obscura is the ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means "dark chamber," and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. For centuries the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century, as an aid to drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace. 
Portable versions (left) were built, followed by smaller and even pocket models; the interior of the box was painted black and the image reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up.
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The Camera Lucida (right) was another aid for artists. Unlike the Camera Obscura, the view to be sketched was not actually projected onto the paper, but an image of it could be seen in the prism as the artist looked down at the paper, guiding her drawing. Another aid was the Lorrain Glass (named after artist Claude Lorrain) which was a tinted glass that artists looked through, to reduce the distracting colours of a scene to tones, to assist in making a black-and-white sketch. The Lorrain mirror was used for a similar purpose, but the viewed image was reflected. All of these aids helped artists to sketch natural scenes, and led to experiments in preserving the views automatically - the process of photography.