Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot’s Notebooks P and Q by Larry J. Schaaf

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 153 always successful. Interestingly, authors from more practical perspec­ tives, including the writers of essays on systems engineering and on the practitioner’s view ofPh.D. work in operations research, stressed that the real world had to be brought into the classroom if future business managers were to appreciate the utility of OR. The final section ofsix essays considers how research derived from operations research has connected with society and its concerns. The first essay, by George Dantzig, considered the developer of lin­ ear programing, is a memoir of Dantzig’s own involvement in the early years of OR after World War II. Other contributions examine specific applications of operations research and statistical ap­ proaches to various problems: modeling various efforts designed to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases, providing computational tools for biologists and molecular biology, and advanced applica­ tions of statistical quality control. Kenneth Scott contributes a nice study looking at the utilization of statistics in legal proceedings. He finds, through a search of the Lexis database, that the number of references to statistics or statistical terms is low, surprisingly so to the author. In the end, this is a rather strange volume. The range of topics is so great as to defy general classification. It is not a volume one would sit down and read for pleasure. Yet those interested in Stanford’s recent history, or those concerned with the development and spread ofoperations research after 1945, might find their time rewarded by the comments one finds here from individualswho played important roles in both of those stories. Bruce E. Seely Dr. Seely is professor of history at Michigan Technological University. He has written about the history of engineering education and academic engineering re­ search, including an article in the April 1993 issue of Technology and Culture. Records oftheDawn ofPhotography: Talbot’s Notebooks P and Q. By Larry J. Schaaf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in cooperation with the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television, 1996. Pp. 413; illustrations, notes, index. $150.00 (cloth). The history of photography’s beginnings in the 1830s is a drama of simultaneous invention, scientific collaboration, commercial ex­ ploitation, “pure” science, and proto-Barnumesque promotional campaigns. While Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and Joseph Nicephore Niepce were working on what became known as the daguerreotype process in France, William Henry Fox Talbot, an English scientist, mathematician, and classical scholar, was quietly trying to capture the image generated by a camera obscura. Whereas the daguerreotype was a unique object, a direct positive image on 154 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE metal, Talbot’s work led to the photograph of the predigital age: that is, the production of a negative, which can then be used to pro­ duce any number of positive prints. As Larry Schaaf recounts in his introduction to Records ofthe Dawn ofPhotography, Talbot’s work during these early years was marked by several key innovations, including a printing-out process that Talbot eventually called “photogenic drawing.” The resultwas a beautifully toned silhouette of an opaque object, such as a leafor lace—a trans­ lucent paper negative capable of generating positive prints. As early as 1835 Talbot began using simple, small cameras (his wife Con­ stance called them “mouse traps”) to focus light on his objects and as a result of this work soon developed a second innovation, a devel­ oping-out process made possible by using gallic acid as a developer. In September 1840, Talbot discovered what Schaaf calls “a radically new method of making negatives, one that shortened his exposure times so dramatically that it suggested a whole new range of subject matter” (p. xix). In this process, the light-sensitive paper was only briefly exposed to light, and the latent image was “developed” by coating the exposed paper with a gallic acid, which seemed magically to continue the process of transforming the exposed paper to silver. Through this process, which Talbot patented in 1841 as “calotype,” after the Greek kalos, or beautiful, exposure times were reduced from the many hours required with solar power to mere seconds. Records of the Dawn ofPhotography: Talbot’s Notebooks P & Q is a full facsimile reproduction of two of Talbot’s research...