Photographic printing frame

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This photographic printing frame used by the English photographic pioneer, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-70), was made around 1840, probably at Lacock in Wiltshire. Talbot had evolved his negative-positive process from about 1835, using paper. This meant that any number of positive images could be produced from a single negative.

Once he had made a negative image in the camera, removed it and fixed it, Talbot placed it in this printing frame with another piece of chemically-sensitised paper beneath it, and exposed it to sunlight. This produced a positive image, which also had to be fixed with chemicals.

Talbot heard about Louis Daguerre's (1789-1851) experiments and rushed into print, fearing that his experiments had been preempted. However, the two processes, although both producing images from light and chemicals, could not have been more different. It was Talbot's process, capable of producing many images from a single exposure, which was to prove to be the ancestor of modern photographic processes.

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• Online ID: 000-180-001-213-C
• Image Rights Holder: National Museums Scotland
• Project: National Museums Scotland Part 2
  Project description   View all records in project
• Ref: National Museums Scotland  T.1936.22
• Date: Around 1840
  c. 1840
  
• Material: Printing frame, calotype (?)
  
• Dimensions: 14.00" x 12.00"
  
• What: Printing frame, calotype (?)
  
• Subject: 21. PHOTOGRAPHY (Departmental Classification)
  
• Who:
• Where: England
  
• Event:
• Description: Original heavy printing frame, possibly calotype
  
• References:
  • Described in A.D. Morrison-Low and J.R.R. Christie (eds.), 'Martyr of Science': Sir David Brewster 1781-1868 (Edinburgh, 1984), p 95 
  • For Talbot, see HJP Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London, 1977); and Larry J. Schaaf, Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot and the Invention of Photography (New Haven, 1992). 
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