A member of the English aristocracy, William Henry Fox Talbot was the inventor of the negative/positive process that became the basis of most early photography. His achievements in the history of the medium often overshadow his significant contributions to the photogravure process.

Talbot decided to pursue the possibility of capturing images from nature after being dissatisfied with his attempts at drawing the Italian landscape on his honeymoon in 1833. Within a few years, he was creating images by laying objects like feathers and lace on sheets of paper sensitized with silver salts, and exposing them to light. These cameraless prints, or photogenic drawings, were the equivalent of photograms. Simultaneously, Talbot was experimenting with making photo-etchings of these objects. In 1839, spurred by Louis Daguerre’s announcement of the daguerreotype, Talbot rushed to exhibit and report on his own photographic process, the calotype or Talbotype. A year later, Talbot realized he could develop a latent image, rather than have it appear directly from the action of light, which reduced his exposure time from minutes to seconds. Unfortunately, he chose to patent his process, which discouraged its wide use and gave the competitive edge to the daguerreotype, which practitioners did not have to pay to use.