Calotype

Author	W.H. Fox Talbot
Title	"The Tower. Lacock Abbey"
Place	Great Britain
Date	ca. 1845
Register	03239

Calotype made by the inventor of this photographic process, William Henry Fox Talbot. The image is of an English country house called Lacock Abbey, a former abbey, where Talbot himself resided. After years of research, Talbot publicly presented this procedure, called the calotype or talbotype in 1839 and patented it in 1841. It consisted of sensitising paper with silver iodide which, after an exposure of between five and ten minutes, gave a negative image, of which copies could be made, by contact, on another photosensitive paper. It improved, in this respect, on the daguerreotype, which could only obtain a single original and unrepeatable photograph, and it could do so in a shorter exposure time. Conversely, the calotype had less sensitivity and the resulting image was more out of focus due to irregularities in the texture of the paper pulp. Although Talbot did not manage to go down in history as the father of photography, he did do so as the inventor of the negative-positive process, which is what eventually, once suitably perfected, would become the basis of contemporary photography.

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