Full name: William Henry Fox Talbot Born: 11th February 1800 Invention/Achievement: Photography Date of introduction/Achievement: The Calotype Process patented 1841 Died: 17th September 1877

William Henry Fox Talbot was one of those high achieving Victorians who applied their considerable talents in several different fields.  He was an inventor, a Member of Parliament at age 32, an eminent mathematician, astronomer and archaeologist - he worked on the translation of cuneiform inscriptions found at Nineveh.  

And yet it was a lack of talent that led him to his most lasting and significant contribution to society.  In 1832 he had married Constance Mundy and in 1833 they visited Lake Como in Italy.  Fox Talbot tried sketching the scenery with the aid of a camera lucida, which projected images which could then be traced.  However, he was simply not very good at drawing.  As he said: "I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold."  He pondered a way of capturing the image without having to trace it.  

Back home he experimented with sensitized paper, leaving a leaf on the paper in the sun which left an image of the leaf on the paper.  He extended his researches to developing images inside a box, but the results were transient so for a while he pursued his other interests.  

After hearing in 1839 of the Frenchman Daguerre who recorded precise images on metal plates, Fox Talbot resumed his work and presented a paper to the Royal Society in early 1839, concerning what he called "the art of photogenic drawing".  It was still best suited to recording flat objects - leaves, lace, shadows etc), so Fox Talbot set about creating a rapid, permanent record through images on sensitized paper.  

On 23^rd September 1840 he discovered that an exposure of just a few seconds left a latent image on chemically treated paper could be brought out by means of a solution of gallic acid.  In 1841 Fox Talbot patented this as the "Calotype" process, opening a whole new world of photographic potential.  

The use of hyposulfite of soda helped "fix" the images produced and make them more permanent.  In less than a decade Fox Talbot had researched and developed the optical and chemical elements that formed the basis of photography until the introduction of digital image recording.  

For the last 25 years of his life Fox Talbot turn his talents to the perfection of a photoglyphic printing process, which was an early version of the widely used photogravure technique.