William Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77), English scientist, photographer, and philologist, a pioneer in photography, born in Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. Having worked with a camera obscura for copying purposes, Talbot developed a chemical process for recording negative images on paper (see History of Photography: Invention). He published the details of his method, called photogenic drawing, on January 25, 1839, eight months before publication of the daguerreotype process invented by the French painter Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. In 1841 he invented the calotype process for developing the visible image outside the camera. The paper was exposed briefly and then bathed in a chemical solution. Talbot's photographic work is discussed and illustrated in his book Pencil of Nature (1844). Later he devoted himself to the study of philology and archaeology and was one of the first to read the cuneiform inscriptions of Nineveh.