William Henry Fox Talbot
17/02/09 09:47
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877)
While Fox Talbot did not invent photography, he discovered the process that has underpinned most photography for the last 160 years. On honeymoon at Lake Como in 1833, he was trying to sketch the scenery there. His lack of success led him to dream up a new machine with light-sensitive paper that would make the sketches for him automatically. He began work on this upon his return home.
Thomas Wedgwood had already made photograms - silhouettes of leaves and other objects - but these faded quickly. In 1827 Joseph Nicéphore de Niepce had produced pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839 Louis Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' - pictures on silver plates - to the French Academy of Sciences. Three weeks later Fox Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to the Royal Society. His process based the prints on paper that had been made light sensitive, rather than bitumen or copper-paper.
Fox Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing. Although simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it required extremely long exposure times. By accident, he discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not see it, he found he could chemically develop it into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then fixed by washing with salt solution and hypo. This removed the light-sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative image, Fox Talbot realised he could repeat the process of printing from the negative. Consequently, his process could make any number of positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes. He patented his process in 1841, and the following year was rewarded with a medal from the Royal Society for his work.
Fox Talbot was also an eminent mathematician, a competent astronomer, and a translator of the cuneiform inscriptions from Nineveh. He patented a variety of machines, including internal combustion engines, and in 1851 is thought to have taken the world's first photograph with a high-speed flash
While Fox Talbot did not invent photography, he discovered the process that has underpinned most photography for the last 160 years. On honeymoon at Lake Como in 1833, he was trying to sketch the scenery there. His lack of success led him to dream up a new machine with light-sensitive paper that would make the sketches for him automatically. He began work on this upon his return home.
Thomas Wedgwood had already made photograms - silhouettes of leaves and other objects - but these faded quickly. In 1827 Joseph Nicéphore de Niepce had produced pictures on bitumen, and in January 1839 Louis Daguerre displayed his 'Daguerreotypes' - pictures on silver plates - to the French Academy of Sciences. Three weeks later Fox Talbot reported his 'art of photogenic drawing' to the Royal Society. His process based the prints on paper that had been made light sensitive, rather than bitumen or copper-paper.
Fox Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing. Although simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it required extremely long exposure times. By accident, he discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not see it, he found he could chemically develop it into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then fixed by washing with salt solution and hypo. This removed the light-sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative image, Fox Talbot realised he could repeat the process of printing from the negative. Consequently, his process could make any number of positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes. He patented his process in 1841, and the following year was rewarded with a medal from the Royal Society for his work.
Fox Talbot was also an eminent mathematician, a competent astronomer, and a translator of the cuneiform inscriptions from Nineveh. He patented a variety of machines, including internal combustion engines, and in 1851 is thought to have taken the world's first photograph with a high-speed flash