or what is perhaps a better method; employ two different developers of different characteristics, as for instance, a strong, well-restrained hydroquinone formula, and another of the softer working developers, such as metol, that will bring out detail in the shadows without blocking up the high lights. If your notes indicate a flat subject, use the strong, well-restrained solution; if excessive contrasts are expected, employ the softer working developer, mixing the two in varying proportions will suggest itself as the notes seem to indicate more or less the desirability of contrast or softness.

Later on a couple of soft, round, pointed brushes, and a few small dishes with a ten per cent. bromide solution in one, an alkali solution in another, and the strong developer in a third, will give a method of correcting certain shortcomings that our plate shows when we attempt to reproduce too wide a range of light values. Negatives that are subjected to this local treatment should be allowed to become rather dense and after fixing be reduced either locally or wholly with Farmer's reducer or persulphate of ammonia as seems most desirable. This will remove the mottled appearance caused by the local brush treatment and leave the negative clear and with a smooth surface. Of these methods of reducing as well as of intensifying, we will treat in a future article.

One thing more: use a good, big, generous light in your dark room. We all learn the advantage of this quite late in our day, and some never learn it. It is not the volume of the light but its intensity. Ten square feet of ruby light will not fog a plate any quicker than ten

square inches if it is of the same intensity. Ask your plate-maker to include in his next shipment to your dealer a couple of sheets of glass such as he uses in his factory. My platemaker sent me two 12 x 14 lights, at 60 cents each that are worth more to me than all the small, ill-smelling, unsafe and eye-wearing lamps the stock houses could set on a shelf. I used them fitted in the front of a large box for several years, but lately have glazed a window in my dark room wall with them and keep the lamp outside. With this glass and one thickness of what is called gold bank envelope paper over it I can develop the fastest color-sensitive plates in a good, comfortable light by using ordinary care. Use a good generous light and make your developing a pleasure instead of a drudgery.

A CHEAP EFFECTIVE BACKING.

THE chief requirements of an effective backing are (1) Should be easily applied; (2) should dry quickly; (3) should be simply and easily removed; (4) it should be capable of absolute contact; and, lastly, and perhaps the most important, requirement is that the backing should be of the same refractive index as the glass of the plate, so that it will ensure the complete absence of the photographer's enemy, viz., halation.

After numerous trials of various backings, I think I am safe in giving the following as an ideal one:

A. D. Chaffee.

SNOWBOUND.''

T

HE Talbots are an ancient family and the church of Lacock in Wiltshire contains the tombs of many ancestors of Fox Talbot from the sixteenth century. Sir Gilbert Talbot,

a collateral, it was, who in 1662 conveyed the mace from Charles II. to the Royal Society on the latter receiving a Royal Charter. His portrait by J. Hales (1679), hangs in the corridor at Lacock Abbey. Fox Talbot's mother was a daughter of the second Earl of Ilchester. His

*Copyrighted, 1900, in the United States by THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES Publishing Association. *Copyrighted in Great Britain by The Photogram, Limited.

father, William Davenport Talbot, died five months after the birth of his son (on February 11th, 1800). The boy was sent to Harrow and lodged in the house of Dr. Butler, the head master. He seems to have been an unusually clever child. When he was twelve years old, Dr. Butler wrote of him to Lord Winchelsea, "I am really distressed at removing him at so early an age into the fifth form; but if his acquirements are beyond his years, how can I help it?" We may also quote from a letter from Fox Talbot to his mother written on June 20th, 1812. He is referring to a fulminating powder. "The

powder she describes must either have been hyperoxymuriate of potash; or one of the metallic fulminating powders which are so dangerous that they can never be removed out of the vessel in which they were made without exploding, and most likely a small portion had got between the cork and the neck of the bottle, which would infallibly explode by the friction of opening it."

While at Harrow he contrived to study practical chemistry—a forbidden subject then, by reason of Dr. Butler's fears of its danger—in a neighboring blacksmith's shop.

From Harrow he went to Cambridge, where he took the Porson prize in 1820. He graduated in 1821 as twelfth wrangler. For two years he sat in the House of Commons, but the political life had no predominant attraction for him, and he soon settled down to the private life of a country gentleman of catholic tastes. His physical and mathematical researches gained him the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1831. It was in 1833, when on a visit to Italy, and when using the camera obscura as an aid to sketching, that his attention was turned to what he afterwards once called "the art of fixing a shadow." In January, 1834, he returned to England, and during the spring of the same year obtained a definite result. In 1835 he obtained small camera pictures with exposures of about ten minutes.

Other things occupying his time he did very little more for three years. In January, 1839, hearing of Daguerre's discovery, Talbot was anxious to fix a date in connection with his own, and Faraday therefore announced it at the Friday evening meeting of the Royal Institution of January 25th, 1839, and Fox Talbot read papers before the Royal Society on January 31st and February 21st following.

During the next year or two he devoted himself to improving this process. On September 20th, 1840, he discovered the latent image, and on June 10th, 1841, communicated a first account of the calotype process to the Royal Society, which, in 1842, awarded him its Rumford medal. In 1844, he issued by subscription "The Pencil of Nature," the first work ever illustrated by photographs. It did not run beyond five or six numbers. In 1845, a collection of twenty-three photographs was issued in a similar way under the title of "Sun Pictures in Scotland."

About this period Talbot commenced turning his attention to the application of photography

to engraving. He had an engraved plate of Melrose Abbey made for him from one of his own photograms by an engraver named G. Barclay, and set to work to produce the same result by photographic means.

About this time the first meetings of what afterwards became the Photographic Society of Great Britain (now the Royal Photographic Society) were held at the Society of Arts, and it being feared that Fox Talbot's numerous patents would hinder the progress of the art, it was suggested (by whom we cannot say) that if Fox Talbot were offered a baronetcy he would be willing to relinquish his patent rights. A preamble was drawn up and separate sheets distributed for the registration of signatures. One of these is in the possession of the Royal Photographic Society, to which it was presented by John Leighton, who himself obtained the sig. natures which it bears. Mr. Leighton sought to obtain Faraday's signature, but, as is well known now, Faraday set his face against all patenting of scientific discoveries and would have nothing to do with the matter. At any rate in July, 1852, Talbot was approached by Lord Rosse, President of the Royal Society, and Sir Chas. Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy, and on July 30th (see The Times, August 13th, 1852), replied, offering his patent rights (except the application of his invention to portrait taking) as a free present to the public.

The later years of his life were much occupied with the study of antiquities. He took a great interest in the aims of the Society of Biblical Archæology and from 1856 to 1877 (the year of his death) he wrote many papers and translated many Assyrian inscriptions.

The Internal History of Talbotype or Calotype.

The first published information of Fox Talbot's photographic experiments was in a paper to the Royal Society, January 31st, 1839. This, while it describes the manipulation, does not contain much of interest beyond the fact that the author was unacquainted with the work of Davy and Wedgwood until after he had succeeded in fixing the photographic image. The chemical outline of the process was the subject of a second paper before the Royal Society on February 21st, 1839. Neither of these papers appear in the Philosophical Transactions, but are published slightly abridged in the Royal Society Proceedings. The second appears in full in The Philosophical Magazine (1839, p. 209). We quote the full text of it. It is the first published

An account of the processes employed in Photogenic Drawing, in a letter to Samuel H. Christie, Esq., Sc.R.S., from H. Talbot, Esq., F.R.S.

Read before the Royal Society, February 21st, 1839, Phil. Mag., Series 3, vol. xiv., No. 88, March, 1839.

DEAR SIR: In compliance with the request of several scientific friends, who have been much interested with the account of the art of Photogenic Drawing, which I had the honor of presenting to the Royal Society on the 31st of last month, I will endeavor to explain, as briefly as I can, but at the same time without omitting anything essential, the methods which I have hitherto employed for the production of these pictures. If this explanation, on my part, should have the effect of drawing new enquirers into the field, and if any new discoveries of importance should be the result, as I anticipate, and especially if any means should be discovered by which the sensitiveness of the paper can be materially increased, I shall be the first to rejoice at the success; and, in the meanwhile, I shall endeavor, as far as I may be able, to prosecute the enquiry myself.

The subject naturally divides itself into two heads, viz., the preparation of the paper, and the means of fixing the design.

"(1) Preparation of the Paper.-In order to make what may be called ordinary photogenic paper, I select, in the first place, paper of a good firm quality and smooth surface. I do not know that any answers better than superfine writing-paper. I dip it into a weak solution of common sait, and wipe it dry, by which the salt is uniformly distributed throughout its substance. I then spread a solution of nitrate of silver on one surface only, and dry it at the fire. The solution should not be

When dry the paper is fit for use.

"I have found by experiment that there is a certain proportion between the quantity of salt and that of the solution of silver, which answers best and gives the maximum effect. If the strength of the salt is augmented beyond this point, the effect diminishes, and, in certain cases, becomes exceedingly small.

This paper, if properly made, is very useful for all photogenic purposes. For example, nothing can be more perfect than the images it gives of leaves and flowers, especially with a summer sun: the light passing through the leaves delineates every ramification of their

nerves.

46

Now suppose we take a sheet of paper thus prepared, and wash it with a saturated solution of salt, and then dry it. We shall find (especially if the paper has been kept some weeks before the trial is made) that its sensibility is greatly diminished, and, in some cases, seems quite extinct. But if it is again washed with a liberal quantity of the solution of silver it becomes again sensible to light, and even more so than at first. In this way, by alternately washing the paper with salt and silver, and drying it between times, I have succeeded in increasing its sensibility to the degree which is requisite for receiving the images of the camera obscura.

"In conducting this operation it will be found that the results are sometimes more and sometimes less satisfactory, in consequence of small and accidental variations in the proportions employed. It happens sometimes that the chloride of silver is disposed to darken of itself, without any exposure to light; this shows that the attempt to give it sensibility has been carried too far. The object is to approach to this condition as near as possible without reaching it, so that the substance may be in a state ready to yield to the slightest extraneous

CHILL AND DUN,

FALLS ON THE MOOR THE BRIEF NOVEMBER DAY."'

Geo, W. Norris, M.D.

force, such as the feeble impact of the violet rays when much attenuated. Having therefore prepared a number of sheets of paper with chemical proportions slightly different from one another, let a piece be cut from each, and, having been duly marked or numbered, let them be placed side by side in a very weak diffused light for about a quarter of an hour. Then, if any one of them, as frequently happens, exhibits a marked advantage over its competitors, I select