What Did William Fox Talbot Do for Photography

William Henry Trick Talbot (1800-1877)

The post-obit  is reproduced from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Talbot, William Henry Play a trick on (1800–1877), pioneer of photography, was born on 11 February 1800 at Melbury, Dorset, the only child of William Davenport Talbot (1764–1800), army officeholder, of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, and Elisabeth Theresa (1773–1846), eldest child of Henry Thomas Fox-Strangways, 2d earl of Ilchester (1747–1802), and his wife, Mary Theresa (d. 1790). The male parent died when his son was five months old, leaving an estate in ruinous condition and forcing the male child and his female parent to live in a succession of family homes. And then, in 1804, Lady Elisabeth married Helm (later on Rear-Admiral) Charles Feilding (1780–1837) and the boy effectively gained a existent father. Two half-sisters, Caroline Augusta Feilding (1808–1881; later Lady Mount Edgcumbe) and Henrietta Horatia Maria Feilding (1810–1851; later Horatia Gaisford) became shut and both exerted artistic influence on him. His extensive family connections provided him admission to élite circles in science and politics, and Caroline's later on position as lady-in-waiting to the queen strengthened his royal contacts. Although referred to every bit Fox Talbot by some of his contemporaries and many later writers, Talbot strongly disliked this utilise of the family proper noun, almost always signing Henry F. Talbot or H. F. Talbot.

The brilliant pupil

Lady Elisabeth's house management restored the Lacock Abbey estate before Talbot attained his majority. He was a brilliant student and eager to learn, but was painfully shy and reclusive past nature. His female parent's facility with strange languages was reflected in his later philological and translation work. Her propensity for travel away diversified his education and contacts, and the intense involvement in botanical studies and gardening throughout her family inspired his lifelong involvement in botany. Following his initial tutoring at home and in Sussex, he was accepted at Harrow School in 1811. He entered Trinity Higher, Cambridge, in 1817, becoming a scholar in 1819. In 1820 he won the Porson university prize in Greek poesy. In 1821 he became 12th wrangler and won the 2nd chancellor's classical medal before securing his BA. He proceeded MA in 1825. On xx December 1832 Talbot married Constance Mundy (1811–1880) of Markeaton in Derbyshire. Almost simultaneously, he was elected to parliament every bit the reform candidate for Chippenham.

Past the time he met John Herschel in Munich in 1824, Talbot had already published six papers in mathematics. This take chances meeting established a friendship and a scientific collaboration crucial to Talbot'due south later success, and probably influenced Talbot's plough towards research into lite and optical phenomena. In 1826 Herschel introduced him to the Scottish natural philosopher David Brewster; Brewster's and Talbot'southward researches on light frequently overlapped, Brewster began publishing Talbot's scientific articles in his journal, and the two men forged an unusually close and lifelong friendship. In 1831 Talbot was elected a fellow of the Imperial Order.

The concept of photography

Talbot had his virtually famous intellectual quantum in October 1833, on the Italian shores of Lake Como, when he plant himself in the frustrating position of being unable to sketch the scenery. Equally he stated in the introduction to his 1844 The Pencil of Nature , the camera lucida (a drawing instrument unrelated to photography) was no help, 'for when the eye was removed from the prism—in which all had looked beautiful—I found that the faithless pencil had just left traces on the paper melancholy to behold'. A decade before, also in Italia, he had tried to sketch using the common artist'southward tool, the camera obscura, but with no ameliorate success. This led him to:

reflect on the inimitable beauty of the pictures of nature'south painting which the drinking glass lens of the Camera throws upon the paper in its focus—fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away … the idea occurred to me … how charming it would be if information technology were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.

Thus was the concept of photography born.Talbot possessed no facilities for experimenting while travelling and was immediately plunged back into parliamentary duties on his return to England. At Lacock Abbey, some fourth dimension afterward in spring 1834, he began to plough his dream into reality. By coating ordinary writing paper with alternate washes of tabular array salt and silver nitrate, he embedded a lite-sensitive silver chloride in the fibres of the paper. Placed in the sun nether an opaque object such every bit a leafage, the newspaper would darken where non defended from calorie-free, producing a photographic silhouette. He chosen the resulting negatives (a term devised later, by Sir John Herschel) 'sciagraphs'—drawings of shadows. He continued his researches in Geneva during the autumn. Unable at this stage to use his newspaper in the camera, he asked an unidentified artist friend to scratch a mural pattern into opaque varnish coated on glass. Using this as a negative, he then made multiple copies on his photographic paper, originating the artistic technique afterward known as cliche-verre. It was likewise in Geneva that Talbot first mentioned stabilizing his images against the farther action of light by washing them with potassium iodide—a procedure now chosen fixing (again, Herschel'due south term). Another method of fixing, probably noticed by Talbot even earlier Geneva, was based on his ascertainment that the edges of his paper sometimes darkened at a unlike charge per unit than the centre. Tracing this to dissimilar proportions of table salt and silver, he concluded that a strong solution of tabular array common salt defended the paradigm against further activeness of light.

Encouraged past the 'bright summer' of 1835, Talbot laboured to increase the sensitivity of his coatings sufficiently to make photographic camera negatives applied. He realized that his negatives could themselves exist printed on sensitive newspaper, reversing the tones back to normal, and allowing the production of multiple prints from one negative. While his cameras at this phase were small, crude, wooden boxes, left about the grounds of Lacock Abbey for long exposures (leading Constance to christen them 'mousetraps'), the fundamental concepts of permanent negative–positive photography were all inside Talbot'southward grasp two years afterward his initial frustration at Lake Como. By the end of 1835, although he had already achieved a high degree of success, he desired to improve matters further before publication, and the knowledge of his discovery remained inside his family. During the following three years, he was fully engaged in other optical studies and in refining his mathematical works.

Although Talbot had little taste for politics, attending parliament faithfully but speaking infrequently, his 1835 retirement had not stopped his political life. In 1838, when the 'Imperial vegetable patch' known as Kew Gardens was threatened with closure, he challenged the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He then galvanized the council of the Linnean Order to petition the Eatables. Although carried through by others, information technology was largely Talbot's initiative, born of potent personal convictions, that firmly established this treasure as a national drove. In 1836, because of his investigations of crystals, he was invited to give the Bakerian lecture to the Royal Order. In 1838 he received the Society's royal medal for his piece of work in mathematics. By the start of 1839 he had published nearly xxx scientific papers and two books, with two more than to follow within the year.

Competition with Daguerre

During November 1838 Talbot finally returned to his photographic experiments and started drawing up a paper for presentation to the Regal Society. In a vicious shock just weeks later, word came from Paris in January 1839 that Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre had frozen the images of the camera obscura. With no details disclosed, Talbot was faced with the possible loss of his discovery if Daguerre'south method proved identical to his. In the gloomy low-cal of an English winter, he could non demonstrate his own procedure, but on 25 January, Michael Faraday displayed some of Talbot'south even so-preserved 1835 examples at the Royal Institution. On 31 January, Talbot'south 'Some business relationship of the fine art of photogenic drawing' was read earlier the Royal Society. This hastily written but wide-ranging paper gave a new name to his process and explored many of its implications. Three weeks later, he detailed his working procedures before the Royal Society.

Daguerre's method, disclosed vii months later, proved to exist totally dissimilar from Talbot's, only the harm was already washed. Fervent support by the French government and singularly impressive early results gave the Frenchman an early on pb. The year 1839 was unremittingly gloomy for the English inventor, both in the weather and in his own spirits. The Imperial Social club gave him little back up, refusing to publish his work on photography in its Transactions (it was partially to atone for this with the 1842 award of the prestigious Rumford medal). Fortunately for Talbot the sun acquired unusual vigour early in 1840. Spurred on past the agile experimenting of Herschel and the enthusiastic support of Brewster, Talbot succeeded by summer in producing a significant torso of hauntingly beautiful photographs. The very process that he had invented besides taught him to run across, giving him for the offset fourth dimension the power apace to translate the complex scenes of nature into monochrome renderings on paper. He was the showtime artist to exist tutored by photography and, in turn, he became its first artist.

The prototype captured: the calotype

Talbot's 'photogenic drawings' had been achieved by the direct activeness of light. When the negative was removed from the camera, the image was fully visible, merely this required enormous solar energy and thus very long exposures. His standing researches paid off in a serial of vivid observations in September 1840. He discovered that a very curt exposure triggered an invisible effect in his silver paper. Past employing a chemic developer he could build this latent image into a total-strength negative. Exposure times, previously measured in minutes or fifty-fifty hours, plunged to seconds. Publicly announcing this new procedure the following spring, Talbot called it 'calotype photogenic cartoon'; it was soon known as the calotype, or among his friends, the 'Talbotype'. Responding to the urgings of his mother and of Brewster, he patented this process: it was a motion that was to bring him endless trouble.

In June 1844 Talbot began selling his serial The Pencil of Nature, illustrated with original photographic prints and designed to demonstrate the potential of photographic publication. In 1845 he issued by subscription Dominicus Pictures in Scotland, illustrated with twenty-three original photographic prints. Some other 6000 original prints were supplied to the Fine art-Union for inclusion in its 1846 volume. Yet, this all went incorrect; when put to the exam of mass production the difficulties of photographic publishing were brought to the fore. Each hand-coated sheet of paper was exposed under fickle sunlight, then fixed and done, often with inadequate or contaminated water supplies. With and so many variables affecting the quality of the print, insuring the stability of silver-based photographs proved impossible. Many of the plates began to fade, often to the derision of artists who had felt threatened by the new invention. When his mother died in 1846, Talbot lost both a demanding friend and the inspiration for many of these pioneering projects. The Pencil of Nature, a assuming effort ahead of its time that had drawn praise from contemporary critics, was discontinued after xx-four prints in six fascicles had been issued.

Other complications ensued. Of Talbot'southward various patents, four were for motive ability, two dealt with metallurgy, and 6 were concerned with aspects of photography. None of his patents was lucrative and the ones for photography began to cause him great anxiety. His motivations for patenting photography were complex, simply arose in part from the tense competitive circumstances of 1839. Whereas Daguerre received lavish French government support and public recognition, Talbot was all but ignored past his ain government. He had freely published photogenic drawing, but received footling recognition. While the terms he gear up for the calotype patent were generous, it undoubtedly limited the spread of photography on paper in the 1840s, at a time when resentment against patents in general was widespread. Scott Archer's 1851 wet collodion process produced a drinking glass negative by bringing out a latent image in a chemic developer, but Talbot felt that its conceptual ground lay in his original invention, and should exist covered past his patent. Meanwhile, wealthy amateurs, interested in forming a photographic society, viewed Talbot's patent as an impediment. He was persuaded by 1852 to relinquish all coverage salvage for the commercial production of portraits, but still this proved insufficient: he was savagely (and generally unfairly) attacked in print. Even Talbot'south priority of invention was contested, with implications that he had appropriated others' work. When tested in court in December 1854, in spite of affidavits by Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster, Talbot's patent was disallowed. The court recognized him every bit the true inventor of photography but ruled that newer processes were exterior his patent. The begrudging proceedings had stained Talbot's reputation then severely that the prejudices raised continue to surface in historical literature.

The epitome made permanent: photographic engraving

This ruling came as a great personal blow to Talbot, adding to the chronic ill health that dogged him in the closing years of the 1840s. Removed from further experimenting, he ceased to take original photographs. However, equally his wellness began to recover in the 1850s, Talbot proved far from discouraged, equally he began building on experiments dating from the very beginnings of his photographic researches. Finally accepting that silver images could never be made truly permanent, he sought a style to realize his photographic images in time-proven printers' methods. In 1852 he patented his 'photographic engraving' procedure, which produced an intaglio plate that could exist printed past conventional methods—the final rendering of the photographic paradigm was in stable printer's ink. Spending more time resident in Edinburgh, he was able to depict on its innovative printing manufacture. Past 1858 he had evolved a much improved process which he called 'photoglyphic engraving' and a second patent was granted. These were straight ancestors of the mod photogravure process, and while they did not succeed commercially within his lifetime, Talbot was on absolutely the right rails in this pursuit. Into the twentieth century, far more than photographs were seen rendered in ink than in silver. He continued to perfect these processes until the end of his life, finally spending more than fourth dimension on photomechanical press than he ever had on photography. The 1862 International Exhibition in London awarded him a prize medal for photoglyphic engraving.

Talbot remained intellectually active throughout his life. In later years, in add-on to his work on photoglyphic engraving, he turned increasingly to studies of the Assyrian cuneiform, publishing many important translations. Afterward many years of heart disease he died in his study at Lacock Abbey on 17 September 1877; he was buried at Lacock. In a manuscript biography preserved at Lacock Abbey, Talbot's son concluded that his father's 'mind was essentially original … he disliked laborious application in beaten paths'. In 1863 Academy of Edinburgh celebrated this intellectual diverseness by awarding Talbot an honorary doctor of laws degree 'considering of his pre-eminence in literature and science, and the benefits his discoveries accept conferred upon guild'. (In the aforementioned anniversary Lord Palmerston, in whose reform parliament Talbot had served, was honoured). The inventor's name is preserved in various scientific fields: in mathematics, there is Talbot'southward bend; in physics Talbot's law and the Talbot (a unit of luminous energy); in botany two species are named after him; in astronomy a crater of the moon is named later him; and there is the persistent testimony of an art that has go so pervasive in society that its products are sometimes as invisible to u.s. as are his latent images.

In his lifetime, Talbot had published seven books and almost 60 scientific and mathematical articles. He left all-encompassing athenaeum of photographs, correspondence, manuscripts, and research notes, which his son, Charles Henry, inherited along with Lacock Abbey. On his expiry, he gave the abbey and its contents to his niece, Matilda Gilchrist-Clark (1871–1958), the daughter of Talbot'south tertiary girl, Matilda Caroline. The niece changed her surname to Talbot and actively managed the abbey and the village. In the 1930s she made extensive efforts to ensure that her grandfather'southward work (specially that in photography) would be preserved, and generously distributed examples worldwide. In 1944 she presented Lacock Abbey to the National Trust. The family continued this generosity past altruistic their entire deposit in the Fox Talbot Museum to the British Library in 2005. Since 2003 Talbot's correspondence (more than 10,000 letters) has been bachelor online (www.foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk).

Larry J. Schaaf

Sources

H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Play tricks Talbot : pioneer of photography and man of scientific discipline (1977) · 50. J. Schaaf, Out of the shadows : Herschel, Talbot, and the invention of photography (1992) · K. Weaver, Henry Play a joke on Talbot, selected texts and bibliography (1992) · L. J. Schaaf, Records of the dawn of photography : Talbot's notebooks P and Q (1996) · Thou. Buckland, Flim-flam Talbot and the invention of photography (1980) · L. J. Schaaf, The photographic art of William Henry Play a trick on Talbot (2000) · Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, Talbot MSS · d. cert.

Athenaeum

Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, corresp. and papers · J. Paul Getty Museum, California · National Museum of Photography, Film and Tv, Bradford, prints and negatives · National Museum of Photography, Movie and Television set, Bradford, Royal Photographic Society collection · NL Wales, botanical notes · NRA, corresp. · Sci. Mus., corresp. and papers · Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC |  BL, messages to Charles Babbage, Add. MSS 37186–37201, passim · Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with Sir Thomas Phillipps · RBG Kew, library, letters to Sir William Hooker · Royal Institution of Great Great britain, London, letters to Sir William Grove · RS, corresp. with Sir John Herschel; letters to Sir John Lubbock · U. Newcastle, Robinson 50., letters to Sir Walter Trevelyan · U. St Andr. 50., corresp. with James David Forbes

Likenesses

daguerreotype, c.1840–1849, Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire · R. Beard, daguerreotype, c.1842, Play a joke on Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire · C. R. Jones, daguerreotype, c.1845, Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire · A. Claudet, daguerreotype, 1846, Play a trick on Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire [run across illus.] · J. Moffat, photograph, 1864, Sci. Mus. · daguerreotype, Sci. Mus. · silhouette (as a child), H. P. Kraus Junior, New York

Wealth at death

under £12,000: probate, 8 Nov 1877, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

The portrait of Talbot is a daguerreotype past Antoine Claudet, ca. 1845, now in the Fob Talbot Collection in the British Library, London.,

Oxford University Press, © Oxford Academy Press, 2004-2017

• Questions or Comments? Please contact Prof Schaaf directly at larry.schaaf@bodleian.ox.ac.uk  • Antoine Claudet, William Henry Play a trick on Talbot, daguerreotype, ca. 1843, Fox Talbot Collection, The British Library, London.