A Photographic Centenary

Abstract

ON June 23, a gathering took place at Laycock Abbey, Wiltshire, to do honour to Henry Fox Talbot, who in 1834 in that house first succeeded in producing photographic impressions on paper. Fox Talbot, who was born in 1800 and died in 1877, graduated at Cambridge in 1821, and became known for his original papers on mathematics, physics and astronomy. In 1831 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and two years later became M.P. for Chippenham. His experiments of 1834 were the outcome of an idea which had occurred to him when sketching the scenery of Lake Como with the aid of Wollaston's camera lucida, and they resulted in the development of Talbot's first process, photogenic drawing, described to the Royal Institution by Faraday in January 1839. The guests at Laycock Abbey on June 23 were received by Miss M. T. Talbot, the inventor's granddaughter, and an address on Fox Talbot's personality was given by his grandson, Prebendary W. G. Clark-Maxwell. Other addresses were given by Mr. H. Lambert, of Bath, and Mr. A, J. Bull, president of the Royal Photographic Society. A large exhibition of Fox Talbot's early apparatus and of his negatives and prints was arranged in the gallery and among these was probably the earliest existing photograph, a window in Laycock Abbey.