A simple science: the art of the invention of photography

Catherine Rogers, 2011

Abstract

The invention of the photograph was announced almost simultaneously by two men, early in 1839. Unbeknown to each other, each had been working on his invention for some years prior to announcing it publicly. The outcome of their labours—a means for producing a photograph—however, was very differently conceived by each of its inventors, and visually, each of the photographic objects couldn't have looked more different.

One of the inventors, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), was a polymath, a prominent English natural philosopher, or scientist, who developed an easy and straightforward process for making photographic images on paper. The other inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851), was a highly inventive artist, designer and painter in Paris, who created a complex, lengthy and skill-bound process for making his finely detailed and beautiful photographs on metal plates.

In this paper I will discuss some aspects of the concepts, origins and processes of one of those inventions—the photographic process and its product the 'negative' as it was developed and described by Talbot. Talbot's early researches into light and optics during the 1820s and 1830s provide fascinating insights into his working methods as a natural philosopher—both practically and intellectually. Talbot's continued interest in light and in visual and practical (rather than theoretical) outcomes of his experiments was also applied to his invention of a photographic procedure. Talbot's approach to his unique invention was to not only develop an easy procedure and process, but he went on to create, through description and practical demonstration, the wholly new field of photography.

It is so natural to associate the idea of labour with great complexity and elaborate detail of execution, that one is more struck at seeing the thousand florets of an Agrostis depicted with all its capillary branchlets…than one is by the picture of the large and simple leaf of an oak or a chestnut. But in truth the difficulty is in both cases the same. The one of these takes no more time than to execute than the other; for the object which would take the most skilful artist days or weeks of labour to trace or copy, is effected by the boundless powers of natural chemistry in the space of a few seconds.

(WHF Talbot, 1839, 'Some account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing')¹

Photography as-we-know-it—or rather, as we are now in the digital age, photography as-we-knew-it—was launched on an unsuspecting and a rather under-whelmed public early in 1839. Announcements of two photographic inventions (neither of which was detailed at the time) took place in France and in England almost simultaneously. Various experiments of a photographic² nature (which was not yet known as 'photography'³ ) using silver salts and sunlight had long been had been known in scientific circles since the early eighteenth-century, and some even earlier than that.⁴ At the end of the eighteenth-century, for example, the son of the great potter Josiah Wedgwood, Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805), had undertaken some promising 'photographic' experiments—with the aim of an industrial application. But neither he nor Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), with whom Wedgwood worked in the latter part of his experimenting, had been able to solve the problem of fixing the image and making it permanent. Davy wrote up an account of this work, but the experiments were abandoned.⁵

The first announcement of the invention of a method for making a 'photographic' image—that is, for making an exact, but monochrome copy of the world, utilizing light sensitive silver salts—was made in Paris via a brief notice about the invention of the daguerreotype by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851), and presented by the pre-eminent astronomer and scientist, François Arago, in the Compte Rendu, on 7th January 1839.⁶ A letter about the invention subsequently appeared in La Gazette de France, and a version of this made its way to the Literary Gazette in Great Britain on 12th January.⁷ The editor of the Literary Gazette, William Jerdan, got his account a little wrong, confusing the photographic apparatus Daguerre used—the camera obscura—with the camera lucida which is a drawing instrument.⁸ It is not possible to make 'photographic' images with a camera lucida.

Daguerre was a respected, inventive and highly skilled artist who worked for a living by devising, painting and presenting fabulous and grand panoramic images which often took many months to complete. He created exciting theatrical (but actor-less) experiences for large audiences with his spectacular Diorama in Paris. Daguerre's Diorama scenes were illusionistic experiences which he also strikingly illuminated. Daguerre's training had been in architectural rendering and then later in set and stage design in theatre and opera. He had been working on his invention of the photograph initially based on earlier work of his partner (from 1829) Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) who first made a light sensitive image in 1826 or 1827, of roof tops, using 'Bitume de Judée' (a kind of asphalt) which hardened in the sun. Daguerre modified Niépce's formula, contents and method so much so that he considered his development to be a wholly new thing and named it after himself. Despite the January announcement of Daguerre's imaging method, the actual process and its contents were not revealed publicly until August of that year.

The second announcement of the invention of a 'photographic' process, concerned the invention of William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) and was made at the Royal Institution by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) on 25th January 1839. It was the first opportunity Talbot had in the light of Daguerre's previous unanticipated revelations. Talbot's own sporadic and sometimes intensive 'photographic' experiments with this branch of optics and with the creation of an image formed by sunlight and silver salts, had started in 1833. After intensively working on his photographic experiments over 1834-1835, Talbot had done little since (although he had conducted other experiments using, variously, and for different reasons, silver, paper and the sun over the time), largely due to bad summer weather. He did not know by what means Daguerre had obtained an image and had presumed it to be similar to his own method. As a result, Talbot rushed to try to claim priority, knowing nothing of Daguerre's and Niépce's early work history.⁹ Faraday showed his large audience examples of Talbot's images selected to show a wide range of possible applications including pictures of lace (itself used as the 'negative' and placed directly on the light sensitive paper), flowers and leaves, also placed directly onto the paper, as well as some remarkable images made using a solar microscope of a slice of wood highly magnified, an insect wing magnified, copies of engravings, and some camera obscura made images of Talbot's residence Lacock Abbey, most of which were made in 1835.¹⁰ At least one Royal Institution audience member thought that Talbot's invention had only novelty value and no long term future.¹¹

Talbot was a Cambridge University educated, gentleman 'scientist', or natural philosopher, of the English upper classes, a member of the prestigious Royal Society, who resided in Lacock, near Bath. A brilliant man, Talbot was able to turn his mind creatively to many and different kinds of problems. Talbot was an inventive, thoughtful and observant participant in the new field of optics during the 1820s and 1830s having made numerous important and useful observations and discoveries about vision, optics and the nature of light, including in spectroscopy. He had been a contributor to the debate on how light traveled, which largely circulated around the pre-eminent scientist of the day, Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871), and had been a supporter of the undulatory theory.

As it was revealed later in 1839, Daguerre's daguerreotype process was entirely different to Talbot's photogenic drawings. Apart from the use of the camera, together with silver (as a silver salt), and, curiously, sodium chloride which both men initially used to 'fix' the images, the two processes, the associated procedures and conceptual approaches undertaken by each couldn't have been more unalike. Daguerre's invention produced a finely wrought and beautiful, jewel-like, unique, image on a rigid metal plate. It was the highly detailed, skilled and carefully made product of a meticulous artist. In that sense the fine precision of his image matched the intensive labour that went into creating it. Talbot's comparatively crude, (initially) detail-less and pale image on thin paper in its way reflected the few procedures and minimal application of skill and time required to produce it. Where Daguerre was primarily interested in, and so successful in creating a single, detailed and precise photographic image and precious object, Talbot's discovery of the photographic 'negative', meant that many positive images—each exactly the same—could be made from this one original image. But Talbot did not stop with the successful creation of an exact image of the world, he then set out to describe and create a useful purpose for his invention of the photographic negative, the basis of which would become universally accepted as photography. Talbot's original concept has remained virtually unchanged for over 160 years.

Thus the significant and critical difference between the two inventions of the photograph was that Talbot had, both with and without his camera, conceived of the 'negative' image. That is, directly from one ('negative') image, many exact and correct or 'positive' images could be easily made. It was an exciting concept which suggested commercial possibilities. The 'positive' image could be very simply made by laying the paper 'negative' on top of another piece of light-sensitive paper and exposing this to the sun. Daguerre's process and its product, on the other hand, was precious and singular. Each plate was unique and not capable of reproduction. The only means for making multiple daguerreotype copies of a scene was to re-photograph the original plate at a later date, or to make many plates, on site, at the time.

One or two people, who, early on saw Daguerre's photographs, then Talbot's efforts, thought that Talbot should give up as the quality of his rather flat, brownish-purplish and often detail-less images were so obviously inferior. Early commentators and observers of the new photographic science didn't appear to grasp the ground-breaking significance and potential of Talbot's invention of the photograph. As I shall discuss later, Talbot, the scientific observer, researcher and experimenter, had a strong interest in how things looked, and in using appearance in order to deduce outcomes. Talbot was used to encountering unexplained and unexplainable experimental visual phenomena, but realized that the photograph—and the broader concept of photography—presented a problem for him alone. He realized that he had to convince an ignorant public that there was value in his invention. And, as the photograph was a completely unknown phenomenon both to its creator(s) and to the public, Talbot had to find the words and means for interpreting and explaining the image and the concept of this wholly new visual experience to both his underwhelmed, but educated colleagues—some of whom were familiar with experimental visual phenomena—as well as to the general public.

2.

It may suffice, then, to say that the plates of this work have been obtained by the mere action of Light upon sensitive paper. They have been formed or depicted by optical and chemical means alone and without the aid of anyone acquainted with the art of drawing.
(WHF Talbot (1844) Introductory remarks, The Pencil of Nature)

A brief description of the daguerreotype and photogenic drawing processes.

a. Daguerre's photographic invention rested on a very highly polished silver plate. Viewed flat, the image appears as a 'negative' image, or as an image of opposite or reversed tonalities. Held at a 45 degree angle the image appears as a right-reading or 'positive' image, in exquisite, fine and sharp detail. Daguerre's original process (with many modifications) had a commercial life of some 12 years before being over-taken by a far more practical process. A creative artist and showman, Daguerre had developed a very fine process for the creation of an exquisite object. It involved many hours of careful preparation, up to an hour to expose, some time to process and required at least 3 specially designed and built devices as well as dishes, heating aparatus, mirrors and substances for cleaning, polishing and sensitizing the metal plates and for developing the image. The daguerreotype was also expensive to produce, largely due to the amount of silver required and the method of its adhesion onto the copper plate—that process usually undertaken by someone other than the photographer as it required special equipment.

A daguerreotype photograph is an image formed by mercury vapour on a silver coated, copper plate. The process involved some five procedures. The copper sheet was first silvered electrically or mechanically, then cleaned with weak nitric acid and the surface manually highly polished with pumice powder, tripoli¹² and olive oil and then buffed with velvet after heating. A special stand made of wire relieved the plate from possible fingerprints as a clean and highly polished surface was absolutely critical to the final image. The second stage involved sensitising the plate with (originally) iodine vapours, a dish of iodine placed in the base of a specially made Iodising box with a lid, the silver plate suspended above the dish. This took some time to achieve, and the result was a surface of silver iodide, now sensitive to light. A rosy-red colour determined whether it was ready or not. The next operation involved placing the now light-sensitive metal sheet in the camera (often referred to as a camera obscura) and exposing the plate anywhere from 5 – 30 minutes (later 5 – 30 seconds). Placed in an ordinary camera (or camera obscura), the image would have been laterally reversed (the phenomena of light rays actually crossing when passing through a small aperture was not a problem for Talbot's 'negative' making process). In order to correct this feature, a mirror had to be installed in the camera to reflect and 'correct' the light rays. A large internal mirror had the effect of lengthening the exposure time and adding weight to the apparatus. The fourth process was the development of the image. This took place in a dark room, in another specially made, developing or Mercurialising box. This time the metal plate, suspended face down, was exposed to mercury fumes from a saucer of heated mercury which took about twenty minutes. Finally the plate was briefly rinsed in water and then washed in a saturated solution of common salt (later sodium thiosulphate was used) and washed again.

b. Talbot the scientist, or natural philosopher, on the other hand, had developed a photographic process that was easy and had only three easy steps which, for the most part utilized materials at hand; it required no special equipment or the acquisition of particular skills. Talbot's original process, which he called photogenic drawing, was a print-out process—on paper. That is, the image appeared on the paper, in the sunlight at the time of exposure. A sheet of writing paper was first soaked in a weak solution of common salt, or sodium chloride, dried and then either dipped in, or brushed with, a solution of silver nitrate. The paper was now coated with a light-sensitive solution of silver chloride and was best used the day it was made. Talbot's earliest images did not make use of a camera (or camera obscura), but were made by placing objects, such as leaves, directly onto the paper and exposing this to the sun. Exposure times were around 15 minutes, but this depended on his chemistry mix, the time of day and year, and the amount of direct sun. After exposure, the piece of paper was 'fixed', washed and dried. Depending on the paper and chemicals, Talbot's images were a variety of browns and mauves. Importantly, the image was in reverse—it was dark where most light had struck the paper, and paper-white or light brown where little or no light had penetrated the object to the paper.

With his invention of negative/positive photography, Talbot had developed a potentially useful, remarkably easy and relatively robust process with which to render the natural world on paper. The materials were strong and tolerant, the human actions approximate, unspecific and unskilled. Daguerre on the other hand had developed a procedure which was detailed and fussy in both practice and outcome, its product fragile and delicate, its human actions requiring delicacy, considerable practice and the development of skill. Daguerre’s material requirements for carefully processing the finely polished metal plates were numerous and elaborate. No special laboratory with specialized equipment was required to produce Talbot’s photographs, simply any room which could be darkened a little in order to coat the emulsion onto paper, dry it, and to process the exposed papers,. Outside, the coated papers required a clear sunny day (specifically, ultra violet light which was stronger in the summer, rather than heat) to expose and later to print. The apparatus and materials required for Talbot’s process were all available to him and required no special manufacturing or crafting—apart from camera lenses. Dishes or trays, fine writing paper, a brush, brown glass bottles, a few not uncommon chemicals, sunlight and good water were the only requirements for the physical processing of both photogenic drawing paper and the calotype papers.

In conceiving of the first photographic image, as actually being a reverse image, and, as a usable 'negative' for making further 'positive' images, Talbot referred to other experiments of his which applied the same concept. In these 1835 experiments Talbot 'smeared over' a sheet of glass with a solution of resin in turpentine which was then blackened by candle smoke, and then drawn into with a needle.¹³ The clear areas would print clearly and dark. Also in 1835 (a year in which the sun shone over the summer thus enabling him to make many experiments and photographs), Talbot also started making images with a small camera obscura. He had also slightly altered his procedure to make the paper more sensitive to light by giving the paper alternate coatings of salt and silver, twice, and later by placing the still moist paper in the camera.

Both Talbot’s and Daguerre’s processes, were practical uses of chemicals which reflected alchemical principles. Both uses suggest the occult in the 'magical' realization of a realistic image made from life. The manifestation of the photographic image was from 'nothing'—it was invisible then visible. Talbot’s experiments with common salt sought to both create a photographic image and also, using another dilution of salt and water, to ‘fix’ or stop the developing action and preserve the image just formed. By using both strong and weak dilutions of sodium chloride and water, Talbot’s efforts to use salt to further simplify his extraordinary process, was also strongly reminiscent of homeopathic practice. Talbot sought to both reveal an otherwise invisible image, and, to also preserve that image, unchanged, as simply as possible. Talbot persevered with using salt as an image ‘fixer’ for a few years in the early 1840’s – unsuccessfully.

Daguerre’s version of what was required for the production of a 'photograph' more obviously drew on traditional alchemy, on its components and on its processes: the hours of careful work, of crucibles, heat, vapours and long series of processes all of which were exacting and precise. His procedure was highly refined and almost ritualistic. And his use of the popularly used, but mysterious liquid metal, mercury, whose qualities had long fascinated alchemists, is telling. Mercury was not an uncommon metal in the early nineteenth-century, it was used in industry (ruining the health of thousands of workers who inhaled the fumes, such as hat makers), and importantly, when considering Daguerre’s particular use of it, mercury was used to blacken glass to make mirrors.

Alchemy was concerned with practical metallurgy, and the doctrine that art can equal or outdo the products of nature, even if human art was learned by imitating nature. Although waning, alchemical ideas had not been entirely dismissed from scientific consideration by the early and mid nineteenth-century. Scientists alive in Talbot’s time (including Talbot’s teachers) had grown up with ideas of alchemy. Talbot’s photogenic drawing process was a ‘printing out’ process, in which the image appeared before one’s eyes at the time of exposure. Talbot’s later calotype process produced a ‘latent’ image, the actual image was there on or in the paper but invisible at the time of exposure and only rendered visible, chemically, later. The calotype appears to be an even more magical process. Other 'photographic' experimenters in the mid eighteenth-century would also have been working with alchemical concepts and views.

3.

As little else is requisite to repeat the experiments which I am about to mention than the possession of a good microscope, I think that in describing them I shall render a service to that numerous class of inquirers into nature, who are desirous of witnessing some of the most brilliant of optical phænomena without the embarrassment of having to manage any large or complicated apparatus. And it cannot be without interest for the physiologist and natural historian to present him with a method of microscopic enquiry, which exhibits objects in so peculiar a manner that nothing resembling it can be produced by any arrangements of the ordinary kind.
(Experiments on Light, Microscopic Appearances with Polarized Light. Talbot 1834:321)¹⁴

In Britain, in the first half of the nineteenth century, optical technology was at a very low point after having been a world leader. Skilled instrument making had declined in Britain following a reduction in the number of glass factories and skilled glassmakers. In Bavaria, however, there was a precision optical industry which was the envy of the world. Talbot purchased numerous optical instruments from France and Bavaria including glass and lenses from the great optician Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826), and he had more on order when Fraunhofer died in 1826.

Glass was heavily taxed in Britain from the mid-eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century affecting both crown and flint glass, leaving only poor quality glass, suitable for bottles, untaxed. This glass was quite unsuitable for lens making. The excise tax (which kept increasing) effectively crippled optical lens research, for example, on the development of achromatic lenses which could be used in microscopes, telescopes and the camera obscura. That meant that natural philosophers had to purchase quality optical instruments from Europe – if they could afford it. Coupled with that, and despite the low regard natural philosophers had for skilled artisanal work, the Industrial Revolution had effectively lowered the status of skilled artisans in Britain. The elite world of the experimental natural philosophers, of which Talbot was a part, looked down on artisanal work, dismissing the role process and craft which was so essential to not only obtaining visible results but which also determined how this outcome appeared. Outcome, and the final product, was the most important thing to the natural scientist, who considered that skilled craft traditions (and their tightly held secrets, something which was quite opposite to the openness of the natural philosophers) could be substituted by theory—with mathematics, geometry and calculations which could be simply replicated for an exact result.¹⁵

Talbot did have great appreciation for, and made extensive use of, fine instruments such as the microscope and the telescope, among other instruments and glass objects such as lenses and prisms. He had quality lenses made especially for his photographic cameras. Talbot's own experimental investigations, however, were uniquely concerned with artisanal process, in his case, with a desire to simplify and refine photographic process and procedure, including the limitation of manual manipulations, and to eliminate any skilled or artisanal components altogether. Talbot's process for making photographs exemplifies this approach, as the steps for the production of an image were simple and uncomplicated, requiring little human action, skill or dexterity. Similarly a number of his experimental investigations were designed as easy procedure with a practical and clear visual outcome.

In a letter to Herschel in 1833, Talbot mentioned that 'I am not much of a chemist but sometimes amuse myself with experiments.'¹⁶ But Talbot's willingness to engage with basic chemistry components, despite his apparent lack of practical expertise, or a real reason to undertake such experiments, appears to have freed him to experiment however he pleased. Which it appears that he did—and with some considerable success. Often Talbot was responding to and expanding on work initiated by others as his documented experiments in obtaining a strong homogenous light shows.

During the 1820s there was much experimental activity around the absorption of light. Much of this work was based on Fraunhofer's earlier discovery of the dark lines of the solar spectrum and the emission spectra of flames, originally published in German in 1810, but not generally known in Britain until the early 1820s. Drawing on this and other work, Talbot, in 1826, published his first practical paper as a natural philosopher, rather than as a mathematician who devised abstract problems and their solutions. 'Some Experiments on Coloured Flames' outlined his improved method for obtaining a bright homogenous (yellow) light for microscopic work, and, also, his discovery of a practical, visual means for determining a method of spectro-chemical analysis in order to make chemical analysis easier.¹⁷ Talbot concluded: 'If this opinion should be correct and applicable to the other definite rays, a glance at the prismatic spectrum of a flame may show it to contain substances, which would otherwise require a laborious chemical analysis to detect.'¹⁸

In his work on developing better light for microscopic seeing, Talbot was building on experiments undertaken by David Brewster (1781-1868) and published in 1822.¹⁹ Brewster wanted to overcome problems caused by chromatic aberrations in microscope lenses which had not been fully resolved by the development of achromatic lenses (partly due to the lack of research on glass being undertaken in Britain at the time) which had a low resolving power. One way to overcome the problem of poor instrumental visibility was to light the objects of the microscope much better, and this was one aspect of Talbot's 1826 experiments, on which he built during the 1830s. Herschel had also been carrying out similar researches since 1819, these experiments included his groundbreaking work on hyposulphites which was to prove critical to Talbot (and Daguerre) for the 'fixing' of silver images.²⁰

Talbot's 1826 paper showed that he had discovered that if the cotton wick of a lamp was soaked in common salt and then dried, that the yellow light emitted was not only homogenous it was far stronger than the light obtained by Brewster in his experiments with salt and alcohol. Further, to aid his observations on the colour effects produced by various other substances when applied to a flame, Talbot used a glass prism made by Fraunhofer. In a letter of July 1826, to Herschel, thanking him for forwarding his paper to Brewster, continued:

'I never received any answer from Fraunhofer respecting your commission, which I attribute to his declining health. I have no doubt you are acquainted with his death, which is an incalculable loss to science. I am afraid his beautiful & valuable apparatus will fall into the hands of person unacquainted with the use of it. His method of making Flint Glass will be lost to the world as I am told it depended chiefly on his personal attention to the process as it went on & that the fumes of the lead were highly pernicious to his health.'²¹

In a short paper of 1833, 'On a method of obtaining Homogenous Light of great Intensity' Talbot describes a development on his earlier experiments of 1826, again illustrating one of two very particular and unique features of his approach to much of his experimental scientific investigations—his desire to work simply, directly and with a minimum of instruments, and to work towards obtaining clear, visual outcomes.²² In this experiment Talbot placed a lump of common salt on the wick of a spirit-lamp and, with a blow pipe, blew oxygen onto it. As he described it, 'the light emitted is quite homogenous, and of dazzling brightness.' Talbot further noted that other, different, (but characteristic) colours could be obtained if common salt was substituted with 'salts of strontian, barytes, &c.' In 'Microscopic Appearances with Polarized Light', which is part one of his paper of 1834, Talbot describes further work towards improving the microscope—or rather, to improve seeing using the microscope—using polarized light.²³ Talbot also used a number of coloured crystals and various salts in order to observe the effects of a polarising microscope which he thought would advance microscopic looking and seeing.

Apart from his instrumentally unaided observations many of Talbot's experimental investigations in the then broad field of science were conducted with either a microscope or a telescope. Some of his earliest photographic images were made using a microscope, thus presenting wholly new views of objects which could not otherwise be seen or known about using the naked eye.

4.

The phænomenon which I have now briefly mentioned appears to me to partake of the character of the marvellous, almost as much as any fact which physical investigation has yet brought to our knowledge. The most transitory of things, a shadow, the proverbial emblem of all that is fleeting and momentary, may be fettered by the spells of our "natural magic," and may be fixed forever in a position which it seemed only destined for a single instant to occupy.
('On the art of fixing a shadow', Talbot 1839)²⁴

As Talbot invented it, photographic procedure—practically and conceptually—was a very economical process. It required a minimum of physical action and equipment, the technology was simple, portable, and its outcome was more dependent on the actions and intellectual decisions of the user than on any limitations of its materials and instruments. Yet few people, including his scientific colleagues, appear to have been dazzled by the skills, or rather, the lack of acquired skills, which Talbot brought to the development of his invention. While the photograph was a completely new and quite extraordinary way of rendering the world, that remarkable outcome and object appeared to be contradicted by its unspectacular practical components and its modest procedure. Talbot’s process did not utilize pre-existing skills, or develop specialized physical or intellectual skills, nor did it require fine instruments or specialized apparatus. Just as it was in Talbot's time when process was effectively ignored in favour of the outcome, today, procedure and the bodily actions that make up Talbot’s process have received little attention. No doubt this straight-forward, simple process has been critical to photography's success, it was a feature of his invention, something that Talbot himself considered important. The invisibility of both human action and even the instrument of the camera in outcome, has effectively obscured the importance of the place and function of both procedure and human agency in photography.

Chemistry was a rapidly expanding field in Talbot’s time. Talbot’s uses of chemistry were not sophisticated but were direct applications of simple combinations and he was guided by chemistry manuals. Talbot referred to Turner’s Elements of Chemistry in his paper of 1833, “Remarks on chemical changes of colour”.²⁵ Talbot acknowledged that photographic chemistry was far from perfected when he published the first part of The Pencil of Nature in 1844, but that it was sufficient to suggest its own possibilities: 'At present the art can hardly be said to have advanced beyond its infancy—at any rate it is yet in a very early stage—and its practice is often impeded by doubts and difficulties, which, with increasing knowledge, will diminish and disappear.'²⁶ For Talbot, explanation of chemical action and reaction was not the most critical part of his experimental work for the production of a photographic image. For Herschel, who experimented intensively with light sensitive possibilities in photographic chemistry and possible light sensitivity in natural materials over 1841, explanation was important. Herschel made few actual photographs himself, his experiments showed that he could actually produce an image, and no more. Predictions about how various chemicals behaved in certain circumstances were certainly useful and were provided by theory. But this knowledge was not essential to working with chemical substances at that time when the popular attitude toward experiment was that of 'anything goes'.

From his earliest experiments Talbot continued to prepare his paper photographs in essentially the same way. A piece of plain paper was soaked in a dilute solution of a halide (a chloride such as sodium chloride, or bromide, or iodide), dried and then coated with a strong silver nitrate solution. Later he repeated the two processes again for a stronger image. Talbot's first significant photographic discovery in 1834, was that a strong response to light depended on the amount of halide present being much less that the amount of silver nitrate.²⁷ His observation of the edges of the paper where the halide solution pooled, caused him to conclude that if less sodium chloride aided the realization of an image, then maybe an excess of sodium chloride would achieve the reverse and actually halt the exposure process. It was a really elegant idea that he continued to toy with for some ten years, finally giving way to Herschel's more efficient discovery of sodium thiosulphate as a 'fixer'.

To 'fix' an image meant 'to render the image insensitive to further change by light'.²⁸ As Ware defines it, fixing can be achieved in two distinct ways: 'to modify the nature of the residual unexposed silver halide so that, although still present it no longer responds readily to light'; or, 'to remove entirely the residual unexposed silver halide by chemical dissolution.' Talbot discovered the first way, calling it a 'preserving process' and it was achieved using sodium chloride in solution, or potassium iodide. The other method was Herschel's discovery of the action of sodium thiosulphate on silver halides. This is the process still in use today.

5.

Talbot had a long standing interest in bodies which emitted their own light, in luminous bodies such as glow-worms. He also made many experiments with invisible ink and secret writing in the 1820s. He made speculations about phosphorescence in his 1835 paper 'On the Nature of Light.'²⁹ This paper also appears to predict his development of the concept of a latent image, his self-named calotype process, and the concept of a hidden or potential image. Talbot also experimented with after-images, stroboscopic patterns and the apparent brightness of intermittent stimuli, as described in his 1835 paper (p 328-9), this becoming known as the Talbot-Plateau Law.

Talbot’s uses of salt is one of the most interesting aspects of his invention of photography and with respect to his experiments with the enhancement of light through the application of dry common salt (and other salts) to a flame. Even the sun was the subject of speculation and experiment.³⁰ One of Talbot's first camera-made images or negatives, called 'Latticed window', made in August 1835, shows that he pointed his camera directly into the sun through a south facing window of his home, Lacock Abbey. The tiny image clearly showed each of the panes of glass divided by lead which made up the oriel window. Using a magnifying glass, Talbot actually counted the panes, noting that there were in excess of 200. He made numerous images of, or through, this window, later moving from directly looking into the sun to making oblique views which also included objects around the window.

For some time, chemistry was seen as the main problem with the accurate photographic rendering of the world in monochrome. The photographic application of chemistry was viewed as a problem of ‘hard’ science, and not as a problem relating to perception. Studies of the light spectrum and of light waves from the end of the eighteenth-century had revealed that each different colour wave behaved differently. These experiments, which used glass prisms to transmit light, showed that silver nitrate responded first to the blue end of the spectrum and progressively less quickly to the red end. Talbot’s light sensitive mixture, like Daguerre’s silver metal-based process, demonstrated this fact of science all too readily. Because the rendering of the world by light sensitive silver salts did not correspond either to a painterly view or to the view seen by the naked eye, it was interpreted as a problem of science, not culture. The strange tonal renderings of fair human flesh, for example, were perceived as the camera’s inability to observe ‘natural’ good taste. A rosy-red cheek was rendered almost black in a photographic print, and blue-eyed people appeared to have no eyeballs. What the observing eye saw in colour, and what the chemistry of science ‘saw’ in monochrome could not be reconciled in a photographic image. Yet Talbot’s photographic process was absolutely faithful in its rendition of nature, with nature.

Talbot's uses of chemistry for photographic outcome lay within the broad field of optics, in the search for novel visual experiences. His interest in chemistry for photography was not to investigate chemical properties as such, but rather, to see what could be seen when light sensitive chemicals were combined with the actual world, the natural subject for the photographic process. Importantly and quite uniquely, Talbot’s photographic experiments did not stop with the satisfactory combination of certain chemicals for the mere realization of an image, that is, for making an image visible. Talbot’s photographic work was unique because he combined his optical experiments with chemistry together with (optical) instrumental use. Talbot sought to take chemistry into a realm in which it was a medium or vehicle for the manipulation of the actual world for its rendering anew, in its own right. He wanted, or needed, a chemistry which could effectively be combined with the lens and the optics of the camera he was also well aware that the world could be manipulated by this same chemistry and optics.

Talbot’s public evidence that his light-sensitive chemistry worked lay in his substantial undertaking which was the production of 24 original photographic prints for his publication, The Pencil of Nature, published in six parts from 1844-1846. Talbot had developed a photographic process which was unique and quite novel. It was also a thoroughly modern enterprise. Talbot’s process was completely different conceptually and practically to Daguerre’s process which reflected the medieval alchemical tradition rather than the new science. Talbot set himself the concept of the photograph and its practical applications as an intellectual problem and he solved it. He achieved this through the materials and process of science, through action and instrumental use. Talbot was not simply working toward chemical visibility in a photograph, he experimented with concepts and practices to effect a new means of visuality.

One of the features of Talbot’s process was that there was no special laboratory in which everything took place. Talbot brought a fluidity of location and action in experimental practice to his development of the photographic procedure. This concept had originated in science. A photograph could be taken and made anywhere, by anyone, and was not fixed to particular subjects or locations. Talbot had developed a simple portable process, while the apparatus and requirements for Daguerre’s process was not so easily portable, but the daguerreotype was particularly favoured for making portraits within the confines of a studio.

As Talbot invented it, the photographic procedure, practically and conceptually was a very economical process. It required a minimum of physical action and equipment, the technology was simple, portable, and its outcome dependent on the actions and decisions of the user. The (photogenic drawing and the calotype) photographic processes were functional processes quite stripped of any superfluous gesture, and in that sense it was Protestant; the process reflected Talbot’s cultural existence, in England at that time. Where Daguerre had thought to use a silver plate as the vehicle for his photographic images- much like the printer's plate, Talbot had used paper. Talbot used paper every day, it was an essential tool for his work. He kept notebooks and journals as well as writing many letters. Many of his published experiments used paper to witness effects.

On the surface, Talbot's invention of an easy means for copying nature by 'the mere action of light on paper' was simple, direct and easy.³¹ But what the photograph did was to almost immediately complicate life. With a photograph, one could picture one’s ancestors for historical purposes, as Talbot suggested in his novel publication The Pencil of Nature (1844-1846). In 'Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing,' presented to the Royal Society on February 21st, 1839, Talbot noted the usefulness of his process for making portraits, but at this time he only suggests making a silhouette for the outline of the face rather than for recording all the details. Talbot also suggested the usefulness of his method to science and the microscope – for the literal translation of the microscopic subject directly onto paper. Until now, scientific observation conducted through a microscope could only be witnessed by a single person A photograph of the microscopic subject meant that many observers could all look at exactly the same thing at the same time. Talbot suggested the value and speed for copying prints and engravings and also manuscripts – thereby anticipating photocopying. In a paper in 1841, Talbot noted the usefulness to travelers who could 'now fill their portfolios with accurate views, without much expenditure of time or trouble; and even the accomplished artist will call in sometimes this auxiliary aid…'³² In this paper too, Talbot expands on the applicability of his process for portraiture .³³ In TPoN T suggests the possibility of using the photograph make an inventory of household items in case of theft; he also forecast both x-ray and infra-red photography.

Photography, and the photograph, was not the/a solution to an identified pressing social or commercial problem—in agriculture, science or industry, for example. Although, many photo-historians appear to have taken Talbot's own, linear, self-aware, discovery account at face value and concluded that his invention was purely the outcome of his inability to draw, rather than something which was part of his wide ranging optical investigations and researches into light. Talbot, like others before him, had had a beguiling and challenging idea, and the photograph had become the answer to something which he was to later define as photography. He illustrated his concepts of photography in the first commercially available publication of real photographs and text, The Pencil of Nature. Talbot had, in effect, first come up with a process and a product and then he set out to invent the problem or situations for which the photograph could provide a solution. The solutions were in wholly new areas which he identified as lying not only in science, but in society and culture.

Notes

1. Talbot, H.F. 1839, 'Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing.' The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, XIV, p.199

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2. Sir John Herschel used the word 'photographic' in a letter to Talbot on Feb 10th, 1839, which seems to be the earliest use of this word. Talbot had been using the term 'photogenic', as in 'photogenic drawings', a term he applied to his positive images. Schaaf, L. J., (1992), Out of the Shadows. Herschel, Talbot and the invention of photography, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p 54

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3. Called ‘photography’ publicly in March 1839 by Sir John Herschel when he presented a paper to the Royal Society. Schaaf (1992) p 54

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4. Sir John Herschel also appears to have come up with the term 'photographer', which he applied to himself early in 1839, Schaaf (1992) p 56

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5. Davy, H. (1973, 1802). An Account of a method of copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles, by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood Esq. With observations by H. Davy. In R. B. Litchfield. Tom Wedgwood: the first photographer. New York: Arno Press.

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6. Compte Rendu, v.8 n.1, 7 January, 1839

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7. Literary Gazette, n. 1147, 12 January, 1839, p 28

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8. The camera lucida was invented by William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828) in c. 1800 and patented in 1806. The device found many enthusiastic and highly competent users including Sir John Herschel who made many very fine drawings using it. For artists, there were many advantages to this small, simple, device which had no optical distortion, and utilized daylight rather than the darkness needed by a camera obscura which was bulky and heavy.

   The camera lucida figures in WHF Talbot's own 'discovery account' of his invention of photography, as he couldn't use it satisfactorily himself. See Talbot H.F. (1842-1846), Introduction, The Pencil of Nature. London: Longmans. Reproduced in Krauss

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9. As his notebooks show, Talbot tended to work on several things at once, often from different fields of science. His interests included: Assyriology, etymology, mathematics, geometry, crystallography, optics, theoretical physics, Ancient Greek and Greek verse, Hieroglyphics, botany and in romanticism and the picturesque so popular in his day. His notebooks show that he would rework old mathematical problems or add to them later, for example.

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10. From Talbot's letter to the editor of the Literary Gazette dated January 30th 1839, printed 2nd February, quoted in Schaaf 1992, 48

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11. Sir Anthony Carlisle quoted in Schaaf 1992, 48

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12. Tripoli is an ancient substance long used as a fast-cutting abrasive for jewellery finishing. It is a friable, soft, siliceous limestone with a high silica content composed of the skeletons of microscopic animal life. It is named after its original main source in Libya and is still used today.

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13. This was part of the addendum to Talbot's initial paper on photogenic drawing, given to the Royal Society in January 1839, in which Talbot claimed to have made several 'photogenic etchings' in this way in 1835.

    Talbot HF, 1839, 'Note respecting a new kind of Sensitive Paper,' Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. 4, March 1839, p. 134.

    See also Schaaf, L. J., 1992. Out of the Shadows. Herschel, Talbot and the invention of photography, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p 40-41.

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14. Talbot, H. F. (1834). Experiments on light. London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science III, vol. 5, Nov., 321-334. This quotation is from experiment 1. Microscopic Appearances with Polarized Light, p 321.

    It had previously been read to the Royal Society in July, 1834.

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15. For example, Herschel, in an attempt to restore British glass manufacture to its former glory, was of the belief that the secret to Fraunhofer's fine optical glass could be determined by reverse engineering. After first attempting to buy Fraunhofer's secrets and recipe, which he wouldn't sell, Herschel, together with Faraday, melted down some glass, assuming that by figuring out its composition, they would be able to reproduce it. They failed.

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16. Talbot to Herschel, March 1833, Royal Society London, HS 17:270

    see www.foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk Schaaf, L. J., (Ed.) The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, Document #2670

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17. Talbot, H. F. (1826). Some experiments on coloured flames. Edinburgh Journal of Science, V, 77-81.

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18. Talbot, H. F. (1826). Some experiments on coloured flames. Edinburgh Journal of Science, V, 81.

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19. Brewster, D. (1823). Descriptions of a monochromatic lamp for microscopical purposes, &c. with remarks on the absorption of prismatic rays by coloured media. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 9, 312-444.

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20. Herschel, J. W. (1819). On the hyposulphorus acid and its compounds. Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, i, 8-29, 396-400.

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21. Talbot to Herschel, July 1826, Royal Society London, HS 17:261

    see www.foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk Schaaf, L. J., (Ed.) The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, Document #1452

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22. Talbot, H. F. (1833). On a method of obtaining homogeneous light of a great intensity. London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, III. 3, July, 35.

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23. Putting one's eye to a microscope (or a telescope) did not immediately yield up an image. The viewer had to work in order to both see and make sense of the object viewed through an optical instrument.

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24. Talbot, H. F. (1839). Some account of the art of photogenic drawing. The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, XIV, 201.

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25. Turner, E. (1827). Elements of chemistry: including the actual and prevalent doctrines of the science (1st ed.). London: Taylor & Walton.

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26. Talbot H. F. (1844). The Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. Facsimile edition Kraus, H. P (1989)

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27. Ware, M. (1994). Mechanisms of image deterioration in early photographs. The sensitivity to light of W. H. F. Talbot’s halide-fixed images 1834-1844. London: Science Museum & National Museum of Photography, Film, & Television. p 17

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28. Ware, M. (1994). Mechanisms of image deterioration in early photographs. The sensitivity to light of W. H. F. Talbot’s halide-fixed images 1834-1844. London: Science Museum & National Museum of Photography, Film, & Television. 20-23

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29. Talbot, H. F. (1835). On the nature of light. London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, VII, 7, August, 113-118.

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30. For example, Talbot's experiment one morning, with a telescope in the Swiss mountains, following experiments made in 1832 by Professor L Necker. See Talbot, H. F. (1833). Remarks upon an optical phenomenon, seen in Switzerland. London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, III. 3, June, 452, and Necker L, Brewster D, (1832), London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1, No 5, November, pp 329-337

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31. Talbot H.F. (1844). Introductory remarks, The Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. Facsimile edition by H.P. Kraus (1989)

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32. Talbot, H. F. (1841a). Two letters on calotype photogenic drawing. The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, XIX, 89.

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33. By mid 1841, Talbot had already devised the much faster calotype process which he used to make negatives. This meant that an image could be achieved in 30 seconds to 4-5 minutes rather than in 30 minutes or longer.

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