The pinhole can be explained by a simple law of the physical world. Light travels in a straight line and when some rays reflected from a bright subject pass through a small hole made of thin material they do not disperse but cross and reform as an inverted image on a flat surface held parallel to the hole (Wilgus). The pinhole camera has served many purposes over time, but its greatest contribution was photography. Without the pinhole, the camera and photography as we know it would not exist. However, modern photography has evolved from the pinhole process to the digital world. With this evolution the pinhole has largely fallen into disuse, however, since the 1960s and 1970s the world has witnessed a renaissance of the pinhole. Not only was it revived, it was revolutionized. Creating images of soft ghostly beauty, with distorted images and disappearing subjects; the pinhole camera truly has an aesthetic all its own. There are endless options to choose from in making a pinhole camera, an art that is limited only by the designer's imagination. This research paper was written with the intention of tracing the history of the pinhole camera, a history that goes far beyond the simple invention of photography. The invention of the pinhole camera is an invention of photography itself, it is an art and it is a medium that has been revived in the field of artistic studies today. The first testimony we have of the pinhole was made by the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti in 4000 BC, he was the first to describe the optical phenomenon which he called "gathering place" or "locked treasure room". He discovered that light passing through a small hole in the wall projects an inverted colored image onto an opposite, empty wall (H...... center of paper... the way to Justin Quinnell's mouth, the hole Pinhole photography has carved out its place in the world immeasurably: where would we be without photography? Renner, Eric Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique Boston: Focal Press, 1995. 4-65, 157. Print. Hirsch, Robert. Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 1-2. Stewart, Doug. " Smithsonian. 31.2 (2000): 124. Web. December 4, 2011. Wilgus, Jack and Beverly. “The Magic Mirror of Life: An Appreciation of the Camera Obscura.” Brightbytes.com, August 2008. Web. December 4 2011. .