Tower at Lacock

1832–1835 · Carrière

Parliament for Chippenham

A moderate Reformer who generally supported the Whig ministers, Talbot sat in Parliament for Chippenham and retired from it in 1835.

1835

The first negative on salted paper

Talbot made his first negative on paper soaked in silver nitrate and a salt solution, as he later recounted in “The Pencil of Nature”. Among his early pictures is the window of his own library, taken from inside with a camera whose optical lens measured only 8 centimetres.

1836

Daughter born: Ella Talbot

1836

Discovers the Talbot effect

In a paper in the Philosophical Magazine Talbot described how the image of a diffraction grating periodically changed colour as the focusing lens was moved away from it; the paper offered neither measurements nor an explanation. The self-imaging of a periodic grating is now called the Talbot effect.

1837 · Distinction

Royal Society Bakerian Medal

25 January 1839

First showing of photographs at the Royal Institution

Shortly after Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype was announced in early January, Talbot asserted his priority and, at a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution, exhibited several paper photographs he had made in 1835. Within a fortnight he described the nature of his process to the Royal Society, while Daguerre revealed no useful details of his own until mid-August.