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1801Diagram of a slave ship
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1807Shopping for fabric
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1807Wordsworth, 'Daffodils'
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1807Textiles from India
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1808Beethoven's sketches
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1810Exhibition of a rhino and zebra
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1815Deciphering the Rosetta Stone
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1815Battle of Waterloo letter
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1816Jane Austen, Persuasion
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1819Peterloo Massacre
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1822Cartoon of a street accident
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1822Shampooing Surgeon
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1827Description of London
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1829Execution of a 12 year old boy
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1829Diary entry on 'The Pillory'
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1830Invention of photography
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18321832 Reform Act
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1834Tolpuddle Martyrs
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1836Early Chartist meeting notes
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1837Dickens, Oliver Twist
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1838The People's Charter
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1839Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby
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1839Poster for Living Mermaid
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1840The Railways
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1840First postage stamp
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1840Coal mining
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1844Popular entertainments
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1844Engels: factory conditions
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1846Freak show: What is it?
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1847Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
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1848The Communist Manifesto
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1849Chartist William Cuffay
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1851The Great Exhibition
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1851Sketch for the Crystal Palace
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1852Woman's magazine
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1852Poverty and the workhouse
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1855London Zoo
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1855Cookery for the poor
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1857Human Exhibition
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1857Mary Seacole
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1858Ship building
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1858Britain's Indian empire
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1859Nightingale, Notes on Nursing
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1860Victorian fashion
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1860Florence Nightingale letter
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1860Coal mining
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1861Mrs Beeton - Lady's maid
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1861Mrs Beeton
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1861Mrs Beeton's Turkey
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1862A Hulk (prison ship)
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1863Underground trains
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1863Alice in Wonderland
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1866Letter from Charles Darwin
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1868City slums
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1869Opening of the Suez Canal
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1872Music Hall
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1876Street sellers
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1876Freakshow posters
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1878Invention of the telephone
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1878Illusionists and conjurers
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1880The textile industry
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1886Victorian farming
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1887Magic show
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1887Circus poster
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1887Victoria's Indian servant
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1888Match Girls Strike
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1888Jack the Ripper murders
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1890Daily shopping
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1892An Asian MP in Parliament
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1893Gladstone: Irish Home Rule
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1895Oscar Wilde on trial
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1896Nightingale Nurse diary
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1898Factory accidents
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1898Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
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Intro
The first photographic technologies were produced during the 1830s and 40s. The invention of photography would revolutionise culture and communication in the West forever. For the first time, images of ‘real’ life could be captured for posterity and sent around the world. Portraits of royalty and other celebrities (far more accurate than paintings) allowed members of the public to feel they were viewing these people ‘in the flesh’. The dead could be remembered, the fleeting could be fixed.
The British inventor Fox Talbot produced his first successful photographic images in 1834, without a camera, by placing objects onto paper brushed with light-sensitive silver chloride, which he then exposed to sunlight. By 1840, Talbot had succeeded in producing photogenic drawings in a camera, with short exposures yielding an invisible or ‘latent’ image that could be developed to produce a usable negative. This made his process a practical tool for subjects such as portraiture and was patented as the calotype in 1841. The calotype shown here is from 1842. Talbot’s negative-positive process formed the basis of almost all photography on paper up to the digital age.
The video tab displays a modern reconstruction of the calotype process.
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Video
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