Talbot, William Henry Fox

William Henry Fox Talbot, (born February 11, 1800, Melbury Sampford, Dorset, England—died September 17, 1877, Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham, Wiltshire), English chemist, linguist, archaeologist, and pioneer photographer. He is best known for his development of the calotype, an early photographic process that was an improvement over the daguerreotype of the French inventor Louis Daguerre. Talbot’s calotypes used a photographic negative, from which multiple prints could be made; had his method been announced but a few weeks earlier, he and not Daguerre would probably have been known as the founder of photography.

Talbot was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and published many articles in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. He briefly served in Parliament (1833–34) and in 1835 published his first article documenting a photographic discovery, that of the paper negative. These so-called photogenic drawings were basically contact prints on light-sensitive paper, which unfortunately produced dark and spotty images. In 1840 he modified and improved this process and called it the calotype (later the talbotype). Unlike the original process, it used a much shorter exposure time and a development process following exposure. Talbot patented the process in 1841 and was reluctant to share his knowledge with others, which lost him many friends and much information. In 1842 Talbot received a medal from the British Royal Society for his experiments with the calotype.

“The Haystack” by William Henry Fox Talbot

Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature (1844–46), published in six installments, had 24 (of a proposed 50) plates that documented the beginnings of photography primarily through studies of art objects and architecture. In 1851 Talbot discovered a way of taking instantaneous photographs, and his “photolyphic engraving” (patented in 1852 and 1858), a method of using printable steel plates and muslin screens to achieve quality middle tones of photographs on printing plates, was the precursor to the development in the 1880s of the more successful halftone plates.