Henry Fox Talbot
I was watching a programme last night on BBC1 called The Boat That Guy Built. Guy Martin is an ex-champion TT superbike racer and engineer who, along with his best mate Mave, are rebuilding an old canal boat. In the episode the wanted an old fashioned shot of them both next to their old boat and the choice of camera was a fox Talbot camera. Fox Talbot or William Fox Talbot as he preferred to be called was the first person to develop the three primary elements of photography, developing, fixing and printing. Talbot discovered, by accident, that you could develop an image with a much shorter exposure than was being used at the time. Although Talbot couldn’t make out the image, he mixed chemicals to turn the image into a negative. Louis Daguerre first displayed his pictures on silver plates but with Talbot fixing his images he removed the light sensitive silver which allowed the picture to be viewed in bright light. From here Talbot patented his idea, realising he could make any number of positive prints, which he called ‘Calotype’
A print of Lacock Abbey from the oldest negative in existence
Talbot was rewarded with a medal from the Royal Society for his creation and we are rewarded with the darkroom.
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