Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Talbot’s wonder at what he had observed is easily imagined. Being a scientist he sought a rational explanation for the appearance of this “kind of latent picture and undertook a further series of chemical experiments to identify the cause. In the course of these he tried in the camera obscura another sheet of treated paper which “when taken out of the camera presented hardly any thing visible; but… I continued to observe it by candlelight and had soon the satisfaction of seeing a picture begin to appear and all the details of it come out one after the other.” Talbot soon realized that he had stumbled upon two phenomena: the fact that a latent or hidden image is registered in light-sensitive silver salts after a comparatively short exposure to light; and the ability of chemicals to “develop” that image into visible existence. Although the principle of the latent image had already been utilized in the daguerreotype process where it was “developed into visibility by mercury fumes its significance was not fully appreciated at the time. Talbot however because of his systematic approach and deductive rea- soning was immediately able to recognize the full implications of what he had discovered. In his hands the bringing out of a latent image through chemical development became a winning formula on the basis of which a workable system of negative/positive photography would be created (figs 133 13b). Initially Talbot kept the working details of his method secret On February 8 1841 he was issued a patent for “Improvements in Obtain- ing Pictures or Representations of Objects. Having thus established his claim to the process he felt comfortable revealing his discovery the next week in a letter to the Literary Gazette describing the new approach as a chemical process by which paper may be made far more sensitive to light than by any means hitherto known” so that “a better picture can now be obtained in a minde than by the former process in an hour. (OS)