The First Negatives: An Account of the Discovery and Early Use of the Negative-positive Photographic ProcessIn 1937 the first negatives and thousands of the very earliest of photographs still lay virtually unseen for ninety years in a cupboard at Lacock Abbey. Later in that year Miss Matilda Talbot, C.B.E., grand-daughter of William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the negative-positive photographic process, generously presented to the Science Museum much of this invaluable material together with some of her grandfather's apparatus, laboratory notebooks and letters. This monograph gives an opportunity for publishing a small selection of the photographs illustrating an account of the discovery and use of the calotype process, the first photographic process to utilize the chemical development of the latent image produced by briefly exposing silver salts to light. -- Introduction. |
Common terms and phrases
Adamson and Hill Adelaide Gallery Andrew Ross Antoine Claudet aperture artist August beautiful Biot calo Calotype portrait calotype process camera obscura common salt Daguerre Daguerre's process daguerreotype process developed discovery Dr Adamson's Edinburgh establishment at Reading exciting liquid exposing to light exposure fade gallic acid George Pritchard glass negatives Henry Collen Henry Fox Talbot Herschel wrote invention iodide Lacock Abbey latent image later lens lenses licence London Majesty's Stationery Office Malone method minutes Nicholaas Henneman obtain operation patent rights patented the calotype Pencil of Nature photogenic drawing paper photogenic drawing process positives potassium bromide practise the calotype printing establishment Reading establishment Regent Street retouched Robert Adamson Royal Society Science Museum Scotland sensitive paper September 1840 shadowgraph silver chloride silver iodide silver nitrate silver salts Sir David Brewster sketches solar microscope Spring Rice sun pictures taken Talbot seemed Talbotype wet collodion process whole-plate William Henry Fox wrote to Talbot