Mr. Fox Talbot, without any knowledge of M. Niepcé’s experiments, had been engaged in the same pursuit, and must be regarded as an independent inventor of photography, one of the most beautiful arts of modern times: he was the first who succeeded in using paper chemically prepared for receiving impressions from natural objects; and he also discovered a method of fixing permanently the impressions—that is, of rendering the paper insensible to any further action of light. In the calotype, one of Mr. Talbot’s applications of the art, the photographic surface is prepared by washing smooth writing-paper, first with a solution of nitrate of silver, then with bromide of potassium, and again with nitrate of silver, drying it at a fire after each washing; the paper is thus rendered so sensitive to light that even the passage of a thin cloud is perceptible on it, consequently it must be prepared by candle-light. Portraits, buildings, insects, leaves of plants—in short, every object is accurately delineated in a few seconds; and in the focus of a camera-obscura the most minute objects are so exactly depicted that the microscope reveals new beauties.
Since the effect of the chemical agency of light is to destroy the affinity between the salt and the silver, Mr. Talbot found that, in order to render these impressions permanent on paper, it was only necessary to wash it with salt and water, or with a solution of iodide of potassium. For these liquids the liquid hyposulphites have been advantageously substituted, which are the most efficacious in dissolving and removing the unchanged salt, leaving the reduced silver on the paper. The calotype picture is negative, that is, the lights and shadows are the reverse of what they are in nature, and the right-hand side in nature is the left in the picture; but if it be placed with its face pressed against photographic paper, between a board and a plate of glass, and exposed to the sun a short time, a positive and direct picture, as it is in nature, is formed: engravings may be exactly copied by this simple process, and a direct picture may be produced at once by using photographic paper already made brown by exposure to light.
While Mr. Fox Talbot was engaged in these very elegant discoveries in England, M. Daguerre had brought to perfection and made public that admirable process by which he has compelled Nature permanently to engrave her own works; and thus the talents of France and England have been combined in bringing to perfection this useful art. Copper, plated with silver, was successfully employed by M. Daguerre for copying nature by the agency of light. The surface of the plate is converted into an iodide of silver, by placing it horizontally with its face downwards in a covered box, in the bottom of which there is a small quantity of iodine which evaporates spontaneously. In three or four minutes the surface acquires a yellow tint, and then, screening it carefully from light, it must be placed in the focus of a camera obscura, where an invisible image of external objects will be impressed on it in a few minutes. When taken out, the plate must be exposed in another box to the action of mercurial vapour, which attaches itself to those parts of the plate which had been exposed to light, but does not adhere to such parts as had been in shadow; and as the quantity of mercury over the other parts is in exact proportion to the degree of illumination, the shading of the picture is perfect. The image is fixed, first by removing the iodine from the plate by plunging it into hyposulphite of soda, and then washing it in distilled water; by this process the yellow colour is destroyed, and in order to render the mercury permanent, the plate must be exposed a few minutes to nitric vapour, then placed in nitric acid containing copper or silver in solution at a temperature of 61-1/4° of Fahrenheit for a short time, and lastly polished with chalk. This final part of the process is due to Dr. Berre, of Vienna.
