In January 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) learned that a report 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 1839 show them at a meeting of the Royal Society of London, and on January 31, 1839 he gave a report there on “Some conclusions about the art of photogenic drawing, or about the process by which natural objects can draw themselves.” without the help of an artist's pencil."

People's response to the new invention was overwhelming. Scientist Helmut Gernsheim wrote: “Perhaps no other invention has captured the attention of people with such force and conquered the world with such rapidity.”

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)

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

Talbot with his assistants at work, 1845

His wife called the small cells “mousetraps.” He placed several of these cameras around his home, Lacock Abbey, in Chippenham, and successfully obtained with each camera, after an exposure of only thirty minutes, an excellent "miniature photograph of the objects in front of which the cameras were installed." He recorded 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 the "latent image" was developed, these holes allowed photographers to check whether the negative image had been fully exposed.

Talbot. Lecoq Abbey, 1842

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

Talbot. Miss Horace Fielding

In 1841, Talbot registered a patent for a negative-positive method of creating photographs, and in 1842 he received a medal from the Royal Society for experiments with calotype. Nine years later he developed a method of instant photography and patented it. There are still ongoing debates about who gets the most credit for the invention of photography: Niepce or Daguerre, or maybe Talbot?

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

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

Nicéphore Niépce undoubtedly deserves the credit for obtaining the first images taken with a camera obscura and the first fixation of images with an appropriate mixture of bitumen. 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 Nicéphore Niépce invented photography in 1822.” And nearby, in the city of Chalon, there is a monument: a slender, not at all old man points with an elegant gesture at a bulky camera.

Outstanding achievements - the first use of silver iodide as a photosensitive material, the discovery of a method for developing a barely visible image using mercury vapor and fixing silver images - belong entirely to Daguerre. That is why humanity preserves his name with special gratitude. The French Society of Fine Arts erected a monument to Daguerre at his grave in the cemetery of Petit Bry-sur-Marne. A worthy monument was erected to the inventor in his homeland, in Kormail. The name of Louis Jacques Mandé 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

Talbot with camera obscura

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) is responsible for one of the most significant discoveries in the history of photography - the invention of the negative-positive process.

The only son of William Davenport Talbot and Lady Elizabeth Fox Strangways, William Henry Fox, was born in the town of Melbourne, Wiltshire. The heir of an aristocratic family, he received an excellent education, graduating with honors from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics, physics, literature and classical languages. In 1822 he was accepted as a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1832 - of the Royal Society. Member of Parliament, biologist, Assyriologist, he was certainly one of the most prominent figures of his time.

Important invention

Carried away by politics, Talbot quickly loses interest in it and, soon after graduating from college, leaves for a trip to Europe. The beauty of Italian landscapes amazed the young scientist. But, being endowed with a subtle artistic taste, Talbot practically did not know how to draw. At first he uses a camera lucida for his sketches. But he soon abandons it, since working with it still requires drawing skills and hand precision.

Then Talbot turns to the simplest type of camera - the camera obscura. The result of his photographic experiments was the invention of photosensitive paper. He discovered that if a piece of paper was immersed in a weak salt solution and, after it had dried, dipped in a solution of silver nitrate, silver chloride, an element sensitive to light, was formed on the paper. After exposure and processing, Talbot received a negative image.

First photographs on paper

As he continued to experiment with the camera obscura, he discovered that smaller cameras produced better results because they required much less exposure time. Having built several of these “mousetraps,” as his wife called them, he placed them around his home, Lacock Abbey. It was then that he took one of the world's first photographs (August 1835), the exposure of which lasted 30 minutes.

In 1844, he described the process of his search and its result in the book “The Pencil of Nature,” which became the first commercial publication illustrated with photographs.

In January 1839, French physicist François Arago's report of the daguerreotype method at the Paris Academy of Sciences prompted Fox Talbot to be the first to publish information about his process. Just two weeks later he spoke at the Royal Society, demonstrating work from four years ago, including photographs of Lacock Abbey. Some time later, he announced the technical details of the “photographic drawing” method, ahead of Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, who spoke only in August of that year.

Improvement of technology

Talbot continued his photographic experiments. In 1840, he discovered (Daguerre two years earlier) that treating exposed negatives with gallic acid could reduce development time to a few minutes, whereas previously it took hours. After development, Talbot used a warm hyposulfite solution to fix the image, then rinsed the negative in clean water, dried it and rubbed it with wax, making it transparent. Using contact printing, he made positive images from these negatives on silver chloride paper. He called the images obtained in this way “calotypes” (from the Greek Καλός - “beautiful”). Later they were called “tolbotypes” in honor of their inventor. One of the main advantages of this method was that the resulting negative made it possible to obtain an unlimited number of positives. In 1842 Talbot was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society for his discoveries in photography.

In 1841, Talbot patented his invention for 14 years. The feud between the scientist and the photographers, who demanded a reduction in the cost of the license, lasted exactly the same amount of time.

In 1852, The Times published an open letter from the President of the Royal Society, Lord Rosse, and the President of the Royal Academy, Charles Lock Eastlake, in which they called on Talbot to abandon the patent, pointing out that his stubbornness was holding back progress. photos.

In response, Talbot agreed to abolish the fee for amateur photographers, but professional portrait photographers still had to pay considerable money to the inventor (100 pounds for the first year of use and 150 for each subsequent year). Perhaps the reason that forced Talbot to take such a step lay in the fact that over the years of photographic experiments he himself had spent a fortune. But, be that as it may, the public was indignant, and the number of legal cases that Talbot opened against illegal users of his invention grew. This was one of the reasons why in 1855, after the patent expired, Talbot decided not to renew it, thereby making his method publicly available.

The prototype of modern photography

Calotype was never able to equal the popularity of Daguerre's invention (partly due to the fault of Talbot himself). But unlike daguerreotype, which disappeared after the 1860s, it survived much longer and became the basis of modern photographic processes. In addition, Talbot was the first among the inventors of photography to solve another very important problem - enlarging photographs. He discovered that enlarged positive copies could be obtained from a small negative, and he put his idea into practice.

William Henry Fox Talbot lived all his life on the family estate of Lacock Abbey, where he died in 1877 at the age of 77. Despite the fact that at first Talbot’s invention was not considered the best and most promising in the world, it was on its basis that photographic equipment developed in the future. And who knows, perhaps if it weren’t for Talbot, the history of such camera and equipment manufacturers as Epson, Samsung, Canon and others would have gone completely the wrong way.

In 1835, Talbot recorded a sunbeam. It was a photograph 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 film. By applying light-sensitive paper prepared in the same way to it, he made a positive print for the first time. The inventor called his method of photography calotype, which meant “beauty.” So he showed the possibility of replicating photographs 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 natural objects can draw themselves without the help of an artist’s pencil.” He was afraid that Daguerre's invention would turn out to 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, a scientist discovered that if iodized photographic paper (paper with a layer of silver nitrate soaked in a solution of potassium iodide) is sensitized with gallic acid and then exposed for a short time in a camera, 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, mirror-reflected image on a silver plate. This simplified the process, but made it impossible to obtain copies. In calotype, a negative was first made from which any number of positive prints could be made. Therefore, calotype is much closer to modern photography, despite the fact that the quality of daguerreotypes was much higher than that of calotypes.

In 1843 he first carried out positive printing with magnification; in the same year, he opened a printing house to produce printing plates for his book The Pencil of Nature, 1844–1846, the world’s first publication illustrated with photographs. In 1851, Talbot pioneered very low-exposure photography, and the following year he patented a method of photographing by superimposing a “screen” on a photographic plate, which became the predecessor of the method of obtaining a raster halftone image.

Fox Henry

(Fox, first Lord Holland) - English politician (1705-1774). He was brought up at Eton, where he met Pitt the Elder and Fielding. Capable but frivolous, F. squandered a significant part of his fortune in his youth. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1735. Here he became close to Walpole, who appointed him Minister of Public Works. Re-elected to parliament in 1741, F. received the post of Lord of the Treasury in Pelgam's cabinet; in 1746 he was appointed Minister of War. In 1751 he fought with extreme energy against the Regency bill, opposing Pitt; He expressed equally strong opposition to the Marriage Bill of 1753. He soon made peace with Pitt and entered into an agreement with him against the ministry of Lord Newcastle. The latter attracted F. to his side, who, having broken with Pitt, became the leader of the House of Commons and subsequently joined the ministry (1755). In 1756, F. resigned and received an offer to form a cabinet together with Pitt; when the latter rejected this combination, F. was content with the position of general collector, which was not part of the cabinet, but extremely profitable. In 1762, F. again became the leader of the lower house. Having then entered Bute's cabinet, he pledged to the king to obtain from Parliament consent to conclude peace with France. To achieve the latter goal, F. did not spare anyone and fiercely persecuted his former political friends, depriving them of positions and honorary titles. When peace was signed in 1763, F. was elevated to lord, but general hatred was retribution for his unprincipled activities. Until 1765, F. retained the position of general collector, which brought him large incomes. When in 1769 the Lord Mayor of London presented a petition to appoint an investigation into F.'s activities as collector general, the king tried to hush up the matter. From then on, however, F. left the political field. Few of the statesmen of England were as hated by their contemporaries as Henry F. Possessing a lively mind, great oratorical abilities and a bold, decisive character, F. was completely devoid of any moral principles: the main goal of his life was profit and pleasure, politics was only one of the means to which F. resorted with complete illegibility and shamelessness. An excellent description of F. was made by McCauley in his “Essay” about Pitt the Elder.

Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron. - S.-Pb.: Brockhaus-Efron. 1890-1907 .

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• The Novel and the People, R. Fox. The famous American journalist Henry Hart in his “Letter from Guernica” states: “When the history of our days is written... when future generations look back on our time and read about...

William Henry Fox Talbot(eng. William Henry Fox Talbot; January 31 (February 11, 1800) - 5 (September 17, 1877) - English physicist and chemist, one of the inventors of photography. He invented calotype, which for the first time made it possible to replicate photographs by first producing a negative image on a photosensitive material, and then an unlimited number of positive copies.

Biography

In 1835, he created the first negative; Talbot used paper impregnated with silver nitrate and a salt solution as an image carrier. He photographed the inside of his library window with a camera with an optical lens only 8 centimeters in size.

In 1838, the Royal Society of London awarded the scientist one of its highest awards - the Royal Medal.

In 1840 he discovered a method for creating a positive copy on salt 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 photographs (positives were printed on similar paper). Talbot called this technology “calotype”, and unofficially it was dubbed “talbotype”, after the name of the inventor. His method actually created modern photography, since with the previously used daguerreotype, shooting made it possible to obtain a positive image in a single copy.

In 1841, Talbot registered a patent for a negative-positive method of creating photographs. For photography, he uses iodine-silver paper and develops it with silver nitrate. Fixes with sodium thiosulfate. He puts the resulting negative into a container with wax, which makes the picture transparent. He then places the clear negative on clear silver iodine paper, exposes it, and produces a positive copy after developing and fixing it.

He also discovered the Talbot effect - self-reproduction of the image of a periodic lattice. In an article published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1836, he describes experiments in which he discovered a periodic change in color in the image of a diffraction grating when he moved away from it the focusing lens used for observation. His work contains neither quantitative measurements nor an attempt to explain what is observed.

Among his closest friends and collaborators is Antoine Claudet. Some photographs formerly attributed to Talbot are now attributed to Claude.

Memory

In 1976, the International Astronomical Union named Talbot a crater on the visible side of the Moon.