On this day William Henry Fox Talbot first displayed the results of his negative/positive photographic process to the Royal Institution in London. He then presented a Paper to the Royal Society about a week later, describing his process as ‘photogenic drawing’. There had been some earlier experiments in photography, but problems with long exposure times and difficulties in fixing the image had meant that it was not until the beginning of 1839 that both Daguerre and Fox Talbot finally announced their discoveries. Fox Talbot was destined to become one of the era’s defining inventors who used his process to capture historic moments and places such as the construction of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square.
