History of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot. William Henry Fox Talbot - Biography, Discoveries, Achievements, Facts, Photos National Museum of Science and Media in Bradford

William Henry Fox Talbot (English William Henry Fox Talbot; February 11, 1800 - September 17, 1877) - English physicist and chemist, one of the inventors of photography. He invented the negative-positive process, that is, a method of obtaining a negative image on a photosensitive material, from which an unlimited number of positive copies can be obtained.
William Henry Fox Talbot. 1864.

Born February 11, 1800 in Melbury Abbas, Dorset, was the only child of William Davenport Talbot (1764-1800) and Elizabeth Teresa Talbot (1773-1846), second daughter of the Earl of Ilchester. When William Talbot was only 5 months old, his father died. Mother married Charles Fielding (1780-1837) after 4 years. Talbot actively used family ties in scientific and political circles, which caused strong outrage of his opponents. He studied first with private educators, then at Harrow. Graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He was engaged in mathematics, botany, crystallography, decoding of cuneiform texts. Was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Linnaean Society, the Royal Society of London.

Portrait of Talbot 1844

In 1823, on his first trip to Italy, Talbot used a camera obscura to sketch landscapes from life. He sincerely admired the beauties of a foreign country and, observing the daily life of foreigners, dreamed of capturing everything he saw. The inventor did not plan to engage in any particular genre, such a thing as genre photography simply did not exist then. However, in his famous album of calotypes, "The Pencil of Nature" (1844-1846), there is a snapshot called "Ladder", which clearly shows the everyday plot typical of a genre shot.
"Ladder" from the album "The Pencil of Nature", 1844-1846.

In 1835 he created the first negative; Talbot used paper impregnated with silver nitrate and salt solution as a carrier of the image. He photographed the inside of his library window with a camera with an optical lens measuring only 8 cm.
Portrait of a footman, 1840, exposure 3 minutes

In 1840, he discovered a method of creating a positive copy on saline paper from a paper negative, with which you can create any number of subsequent copies.This technology combined high quality and the ability to copy pictures (positives were printed on similar paper). Talbot called this technology "calotype", and unofficially it was dubbed "tolbotype".
Portrait of Ela, daughter of Talbot. early 1840s

The inventor of the Daguerreotype, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, presented to the Academic Council almost the same discovery in 1939, but unlike the Talbot process, the daguerreotype was created on glass, not on paper. Despite the fact that by 1839 Talbot had long known about this method of obtaining prints, his discovery was not recognized as the first. Nevertheless, history has dotted the i, and photography for the past 100 years has been carried out precisely with the help of the technique discovered by William Henry Fox Talbot. In addition, the negative-positive process allows you to make copies from the negative, and this cannot be in daguerreotype (there is no negative there).
Carpenters at work. 1842

In 1841, Talbot filed a patent for the negative-positive way of taking photographs. For shooting, he uses iodine-silver paper, develops with the help of silver nitrate. Fixes with sodium thiosulfate. He lowers the resulting negative into a container with wax, which makes the picture transparent. After that, he puts a transparent negative on clean iodine-silver paper, exposes and receives a positive copy after developing and fixing.
Lecoq-Abbey. 1842

In 1844 Talbot published the first book with photographic illustrations: The Pencil of Nature; in doing so, he uses hand-drawn calotypes.
Book cover The Pencil of Nature

Also discovered the Talbot effect - self-reproduction of the image of a periodic lattice. In an article published in Philosophical Magazine in 1836, he describes experiments in which he discovered periodic color changes in the image of a diffraction grating when he moved the focusing lens used for observation away from it. In his work, there are no quantitative measurements, no attempt to explain the observed.
Suspension bridge in Rouen, France. 1843

Died Talbot in Laycock Abbey (Wiltshire) on September 17, 1877.
Lady Elizabeth Teresa Fielding. 1843

Sleeping Nicholas Henneman. 1843

Portrait of Horace Maria Fielding and Thomas Gasford. 1843

Portrait of a young man. 1843

Open door, 1843

London street 1845

Portrait of Neville Storey-Maskelyn. 1845

Market square, 1845

Fruit Traders. 1845

City street. 1845

Fox Talbot with his assistants at work, 1845

Photo studio Talbot. 1845

Street in Frankfurt, Cloudy Day, 32 Minutes in a Cell 1846

Russell Street 1848

Holy Trinity Church, Oxford Road, 1848

William Henry Fox Talbot(Talbot, William Henry Fox). (1800-1877), English physicist, chemist, inventor of the negative-positive process in photography (calotypes from the Greek words kalos - beautiful and typos - imprint), later he was given the name tolbotype. Born February 11, 1800 in Melbury Abbas (Dorset). He studied first with private teachers, then at Harrow. Graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He was engaged in mathematics, botany, crystallography, decoding of cuneiform texts. Was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Linnaean Society, the Royal Society of London. The idea of ​​the photographic process originated with the scientist in 1833. Talbot tried to copy the views of nature using a camera obscura. But he had no drawing skills. Therefore, he wanted to capture the image that he saw in the camera obscura. Talbot knew that light could affect the properties of various materials and invented such a light-sensitive material. In 1834 Talbot invented photosensitive paper. The images obtained on it were fixed with a solution of sodium chloride (common table salt) or potassium iodide. Talbot's first photographs were simple photograms, i.e. contact photocopies. He then "combined" a pinhole camera with a naturally illuminated microscope and obtained a positive photographic print from the negative.

In 1835 Talbot recorded a sunbeam. It was a snapshot of the lattice window of his house. Talbot used paper impregnated with silver chloride. The exposure lasted for an hour.
Talbot received the world's first negative. By attaching to it light-sensitive paper prepared in the same way, he made a positive print for the first time. The inventor called his method of shooting calotypy, which meant "beauty". So he showed the possibility of duplicating images and connected the future of photography with the world of beauty.

At the end of January 1839, he asked Faraday to show his work at a meeting of the Royal Society of London, and on January 31, 1839 he made a report there "Some conclusions about the art of photogenic drawing, or about the process by which objects of nature can draw themselves without the help of an artist's pencil." He was afraid that Daguerre's invention would be the same as his own, and did not want to lose his priority. However, Talbot did not realize that Daguerre had developed a completely different process. John Herschel called Talbot's invention photography and coined the words negative and positive.

In 1840, the scientist discovered that if iodized photographic paper (paper with a layer of silver nitrate kept in a solution of potassium iodide) is sensitized with gallic acid, and then exposed for a short time in a camera, then a latent image will appear on it, which can then be developed with a mixture of gallic acid and nitrate silver. Talbot called his invention calotype.

Talbot's calotype and Daguerre's daguerreotype had fundamental differences. The daguerreotype immediately produced a positive, mirrored image on a silver plate. This simplified the process, but made it impossible to obtain copies. In calotypy, a negative was first made, from which any number of positive prints could be made. Therefore, calotypes are much closer to modern photography, despite the fact that the quality of daguerreotypes was much higher than calotypes.

In 1843 he first carried out positive printing with enlargement; in the same year he opened a printing house for the production of printing plates for his book The Pencil of Nature (1844-1846) - the world's first edition illustrated with photographs. In 1851, Talbot first took photographs with a very low exposure, and the following year patented a method of photographing with the imposition of a "screen" on a photographic plate, which became the forerunner of the method of obtaining a raster halftone image.

Lot description: WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT (1800-1877). The Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1844.11 calotypes from 24.11 salted paper prints from calotype negatives; Parts I (plates IV), III (plates XIII-XV) and IV (plates XV-XVIII), each with accompanying letterpress page, each with plate number "1-5" and "13-18 in ink (on the mount) ; each accompanied by letterpress description; varying sizes from 6¼x7 7 / 8in. (15.8x20 cm.) to 5 1 / 8x5 in. (23x22.8 cm.); inscribed "ER Pratt Rebound 1890 "in ink (on the flyleaf);" Notice "pasted to reverse of mount (Plate XIII); Part I with" Introductory Remarks "and" A Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art "; bound in a large 4to. Volume, with stamped gilt title "(! LANG: Sun Pictures, F. Fox Talbot, 1844 (on the spine). PMM 318a.

Provenance: with George Rinhart; to the present owner; acquired 1970s.

Leaving: $ 30,000. Christie Auction"s. The Miller-Plummer Collection of Photographs. 8 October 2009. New York, Rockefeller Plaza. Лот № 532. !}

Talbot, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877) - English chemist and physicist, inventor of the negative-positive process in photography, that is, a method of obtaining a negative image on a photosensitive material, from which an unlimited number of positive copies can be obtained: (calotypes from the Greek words kalos - beautiful and typos - imprint), later he was given the name tolbotypium.Born February 11, 1800 in Melbury Abbas (Dorset). Studied first with private teachers, then in Harrow. Graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He was engaged in mathematics, botany, crystallography, deciphering cuneiform texts. Was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, Linnaean Society, Royal Society of London. The idea of ​​the photographic process originated from the scientist in 1833. Talbot tried to copy nature views using a camera obscura. But he did not have the skills Therefore, he wanted to fix the image that e he saw in a camera obscura. Talbot knew that light could affect the properties of various materials and invented such a light-sensitive material. In 1834 Talbot invented photosensitive paper. The images obtained on it were fixed with a solution of sodium chloride (common table salt) or potassium iodide. Talbot's first photographs were simple photograms, i.e. contact photocopies. He then "combined" a pinhole camera with a naturally illuminated microscope and obtained a positive photographic print from the negative.

"The Pencil of Nature" is a book by Henry Fox Talbot. published in six parts in 1844-1846. The first book with published original photographs pasted by hand. It consisted of six issues, containing a total of 24 photographs, and was published from June 1844 to April 1846. Two copies of it are kept in the Menshelev Library of Eastman House. To obtain the number of prints required for publication, Talbot opened the Reading Establishment photo studio in the English city of Reading in 1843. The studio was run by his assistant Nicholas Hennemann (1813-1898). Illustration II in the book is "View of the Boulevard of Paris", shot by Talbot from the window of a hotel room.

William Henry Fox Talbot. View of the Parisian boulevard. OK. 1844.

It was not by chance that Talbot took up filming in Daguerre's homeland: he specially traveled, accompanied by Hennemann, to present his calotyping process in France. Talbot described the scene vividly in the accompanying text:

“The viewer looks to the northeast. Time is the middle of the day. The sun leaves a row of pillared buildings: the facades are already in shadow, but the open shutters protrude far to catch the outgoing sunlight. It's hot and dusty outside, the road has just been watered ... "

The verbal description cannot convey all the richness of the details shown by the new invention. "Porcelain," a photograph of Talbot's collection of cups and porcelain figurines, became Illustration III in Nature's Pencil.

Hive Henry Fox Talbot. Porcelain. Until 1844.

In the accompanying text, Talbot extols the ability of photography "To depict on paper in much less time than it would take ... to compile a written catalog" the entire collection of porcelain. Talbot immediately sagaciously notes how useful it is to refuse a new visual medium in case he tries to sell something stolen.- in other words, the photographer foresees the future use of his invention in the compilation of illustrated catalogs. Considering the potential interest of collectors in a new way of communicating information, Talbot wrote:

"The more unusual and bizarre the shapes of antique teapots, the higher the advantage in creating their image, rather than a verbal description."

Hive Henry Fox Talbot. Opened door. Until 1844.

Before publishing the latest issue of Nature's Pencil, Talbot decided to photograph, as he himself wrote, “scenes associated with the life and work of the romantic writer Sir Walter Scott,” whose literature had a strong influence on Talbot. In October 1844, the photographer made a special trip to Scotland to photograph Scott's house in Abbotsford, as well as other places mentioned by the writer in his works. Talbot created a new book of 23 "solar pictures" as he called them, representing the views of Scotland. Compared to Nature's Pencil, Sunshine Paintings in Scotland, published by the Reading Establishment, was exceptionally picturesque. Figure 16 in the book, of Lough Catherine Lake, clearly shows the still, glass-smooth surface of the water and the desolate landscape reflected in it. Queen Victoria was one of 103 subscribers to this publication, but in the end the Reading Establishment was unprofitable. The photographer was unable to cope with the problem of fading in prints, and after the release of three more editions in 1846 Henneman closed the studio and moved to London. Another subscriber to Sunshine Paintings was the Rev. Calvert Richard Jones, son of a Welsh landowner, former marine painter, draftsman, daguerreotype, who drew attention to calotype. The "Chess Players" (on the left in the photo is Antoine Claude, and on the right, possibly Jones himself) are attributed to Talbot's circle, although various prints with the same plot have recently been attributed to Claude himself or other photographers of Talbot's circle.

Hive Henry Fox Talbot. Ladder. Until 1844.

Information from other sources: In 1835 Talbot recorded a sunbeam. It was a snapshot of the lattice window of his house. Talbot used paper impregnated with silver chloride. The exposure lasted for an hour. Talbot received the world's first negative. By attaching to it light-sensitive paper prepared in the same way, he made a positive print for the first time. The inventor called his method of shooting calotypy, which meant "beauty". So he showed the possibility of duplicating images and connected the future of photography with the world of beauty. At the end of January 1839, he asked Faraday to show his work at a meeting of the Royal Society of London, and on January 31, 1839 he made a report there "Some conclusions about the art of photogenic drawing, or about the process by which objects of nature can draw themselves without the help of an artist's pencil." He was afraid that Daguerre's invention would be the same as his own, and did not want to lose his priority. However, Talbot did not realize that Daguerre had developed a completely different process. John Herschel called Talbot's invention photography and coined the words negative and positive. In 1840, the scientist discovered that if iodized photographic paper (paper with a layer of silver nitrate kept in a solution of potassium iodide) is sensitized with gallic acid, and then exposed for a short time in a camera, then a latent image will appear on it, which can then be developed with a mixture of gallic acid and nitrate silver. Talbot called his invention calotype. In 1841, Talbot received a patent for the calotypy process and began charging a fairly high price for its use, which severely limited the spread of calotypy. Unlike obtaining daguerreotypes, Talbot's process consisted of using one negative from which few positive prints could be made. This process of judgment was to become the foundation of modern photography. In 1844, Talbot published The Pencil of Nature, the first major work illustrated with original photographs. Only four years have passed since the world community learned that sunlight can paint itself. To some it seemed like magic, to some charlatanism, many generally had a poor idea of ​​the new invention and its possibilities. And one of the inventors of photography, the talented English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot opened a printing house for the production of printed forms for his book "The Pencil of Nature" - the world's first commercial publication illustrated with photographs. A year later, on June 29, 1844, the first part of the book was published, which included 4 photographs (calotypes, as Talbot called them) with an explanatory text by the author. Since many potential readers did not know anything about photography, Talbot was forced to insert such explanations into the book:

“The illustrations in the book were made with light without the participation of the artist's brush”; “Acquiring an image of several objects will not take more time than acquiring an image of one subject, because the Camera captures them all at once, regardless of the number,” and so on.

Hive Henry Fox Talbot. Lake Lough Catherine. 1844.

Talbot planned to publish a large number of parts of the book, but, unfortunately, Nature's Pencil was not a commercial success. This was explained primarily by the high cost of publishing: each photograph was printed by hand and then pasted into a book. There could be no talk of any mechanization of this process in the first half of the 19th century. Whatever it was, Talbot managed to release six parts of the book. Each of them consisted of four calotypes illustrating one or another area of ​​application of photography. I would like to emphasize that the scientist included in his publication several images representing the artistic side of photography (for example, "The Open Door"), showing that from the very first days photography began to claim its place in the family of fine arts.

Talbot William Henry Fox (11.II.1800 - 17.IX.1877)- English physicist and chemist. Born in Melbury Abbas, Dorset. He studied first with private teachers, then at Harrow. Graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University. Member Royal Astronomical Society, Linnaean Society, Royal Society of London.
He was engaged in mathematics, botany, crystallography, decoding of cuneiform texts, etc.
Inventor of the negative-positive process in photography. In 1833 he began work that led him to the invention of the photographic process.
In 1834 he invented light-sensitive paper. The images obtained on it were fixed with a solution of sodium chloride (common table salt) or potassium iodide. The first photographs were simple photograms, i.e. contact photocopies. He then "combined" a pinhole camera with a naturally illuminated microscope and obtained a positive photographic print from the negative.
In 1835, two and a half weeks after the publication of the French inventor's publication ... Daguerre about his discovery, Talbot demonstrated his "photogenic paintings" at the Royal Institution and soon published an article detailing the technology of the photographic process he invented.
In 1840, he discovered that if iodized photographic paper (paper with a layer of silver nitrate kept in a solution of potassium iodide) is sensitized with gallic acid, and then exposed for a short time in a camera, then a latent image will appear on it, which can then be developed with a mixture of gallic acid and silver nitrate ... Talbot called his invention kalotypy (from the Greek words kalos - beautiful and typos - imprint), later he was given the name tolbotypy.
In 1843 he first carried out positive printing with enlargement; in the same year he opened a printing house for the production of printing plates for his book The Pencil of Nature (1844-1846) - the world's first edition illustrated with photographs.
In 1851, Talbot first took photographs with a very low exposure, and the following year patented a method of photographing with the superposition of a "screen" on a photographic plate, which became the forerunner of the method of obtaining a raster halftone image.
Talbot was one of the scholars who deciphered the cuneiform text of the Assyrian king Tiglathpalasar I (c. 1150 BC) in 1857. He has published about 70 translations of other Assyrian cuneiform texts and 50 articles on various issues of natural sciences and mathematics.

In January 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) learned that a message had been made at the Academy of Sciences in Paris about the invention of L. Daguerre - the daguerreotype. This prompted Talbot to publish his works and at the end of January of the same 1839 to show them at a meeting of the Royal Society of London, and on January 31, 1839 he made a report there "Some Conclusions on the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or on the Process by which Objects of Nature Can Draw themselves without the help of an artist's pencil ".

The people's reaction to the new invention was overwhelming. Scientist Helmut Gernsheim wrote: "Perhaps no other invention has captured the attention of people with such force and has not conquered the world with such impetuosity."

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)

The difference between Talbot's technology was in the selection of materials. He also used silver, but he did not cover metal plates with it, but ordinary paper. Then he impregnated it with wax and so got a negative. Then I put it on top of another sheet of paper, also coated with silver chloride, and left it in the light, thus getting a positive image. Although the quality of photography obtained by Talbot's method was significantly worse than that of his French counterpart, his method nevertheless became more promising. After all, this method made it possible to make many prints from one negative. In addition, it was cheaper and easier to work with paper than with fragile daguerreotypes. A slight blurring of the contours and a color reminiscent of sepia, in the perception of contemporaries, brought calotype closer to drawing and lithography. Receiving paper negatives the inventor called calotypy(calotypes from Greek words kalos- lovely and typos- imprint) Unofficially, he was christened talbotypy... and the unlimited circulation gave it undeniable advantages over the daguerreotype.

Talbot with his assistants at work, 1845

His wife called the little cameras "mousetraps." He placed several of these cameras around his home, Lacock Abbey, in Chippenham, and fortunately got each camera, after only thirty minutes of exposure, an excellent "miniature photograph of the objects in front of which the cameras were set." He captured these images, one square inch in size, by washing the paper in a strong solution of common salt or potassium iodide.

Henry Fox Talbot cameras with inspection hole

Before developing the "latent image", these holes allowed photographers to check if the negative image was fully exposed.

Talbot. Lecoq Abbey, 1842

Talbot. Broom. The first photograph included in the book "The Pencil of Nature". 1844 - 1846. Calotype.

Talbot. Miss Horace Fielding

In 1841, Talbot registered a patent for the negative-positive method of photographing, and in 1842 received the Royal Society Medal for Experiments with Calotype. Nine years later, he developed a method of instant photography and patented it. Until now, disputes about who the main merit of the invention of photography belongs: Niepce or Daguerre, and maybe Talbot?

Humanity is grateful to Fox Talbot for inventing the negative-positive process that laid the foundation for all modern photography.

Bronze statue of William Henry Fox Talbot in the business park of Chippenham, Wiltshire, England

Nicephore Niepce undoubtedly deserves the credit for obtaining the first images made with the obscura camera, and the first fixation with the corresponding mixture of bitumen of the images. He is the undisputed inventor of heliography. At the entrance to the Burgundian village of Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, there is a large stone with the inscription: "In this village, Nicefort Niepce invented photography in 1822". And nearby, in the city of Chalon, there is a monument: a slender, not at all old man with an elegant gesture points to a bulky camera.

Outstanding merit - the use of silver iodide as a photosensitive material for the first time, the discovery of a method for developing a barely visible image using mercury vapor and fixing silver images - belongs completely and undividedly to Daguerre. That is why humanity keeps his name with special gratitude. The French Society of Fine Arts erected a monument to Daguerre on his grave in the Petit-Brie-sur-Marne cemetery. A worthy monument was erected to the inventor in his homeland, in Cormail. The name of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre is included in the list of the greatest scientists of France, placed on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Monument to Daguerre in Washington, USA