Talbot, WILLIAM HENRY FOX

Talbot, WILLIAM HENRY FOX, celebrated in connection with photography, was born at Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham, on 11th February 1800. He passed from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as twelfth wrangler and obtained the junior Chancellor's Medal in 1821. In the first reformed parliament Talbot sat for Chippenham; but scientific investigation being more to his taste, he gave up politics and devoted himself to the problem of fixing shadows. His principal services to photographic art, which in 1842 secured him a Royal Society medal, are described at PHOTOGRAPHY. Others lay in photographic and 'photographic' engraving. Latterly he devoted himself to the study of general physics and to philological and miscellaneous researches, and was one of the first decipherers of the cuneiform inscriptions from Nineveh. He died at Lacock Abbey, 17th September 1877. His Pencil of Nature (1846), one of the first works illustrated by photographs, describes his great invention. Amongst his works are Hermes, or Classical and Antiquarian Researches (1838-39); Legendary Tales (1830); Antiquity of the Book of Genesis (1839); and a work on English Etymologies (1846).