Abstract
SOME of the earliest instruments in the history of photography have just been acquired by the Science Museum, South Kensington, on loan from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. They include three instruments used by Fox Talbot, the inventor of the first paper photographic process: (1) A camera lucida, the use of which on the shores of Lake Como in 1833 first suggested to him that the invention of a sensitive paper would record such scenes more perfectly than sketches made by hand. This is the instrument mentioned in his “Pencil of Nature”, published in 1844. (2) Fox Talbot's solar microscope, with which the earliest photomicrographs on paper were produced. (3) A Culpepper type microscope, c. 1820. With other instruments and specimens which have recently been acquired and are in course of classification prior to exhibition, the representation of Fox Talbot's work in photography bids fair to be complete.
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Early Photographic Instruments. Nature 138, 681 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138681c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138681c0