Information and discussion on all aspects of British photographic history
Of interest to fellow BPH members are some of the documents published online today. They include accounts from Robert Falcon Scott, commander of the expedition to the Antarctic, during the earliest British attempt to survey the frozen continent between 1901 and 1904. He talks of balloon flights over the unexplored continent and an account of a sledge journey to the furthest point south then reached, a journey that almost killed his companion Ernest Shackleton.
Another one are pages from the diary of the astronomer (and also botanist, chemist, mathematician, to name but a few!) John Herschel from 1839 which give some insight into his role as the co-inventor of photography. According to Keith Moore, head of library and archives at the Royal Society's Centre for History of Science, "William Henry Fox Talbot has this great idea to use a camera to take an image, but he couldn't fix the image and make it permanent on paper. It was John Herschel who did that. Herschel was effectively the co-inventor of photography and that's evident from the diaries in 1839 where he's talking about his photographic experiments."
You can check them out for yourself at the Royal Society's website here.
A piece of trivial: Herschel was held in high esteem by his Victorian peers; he is buried in Westminster Abbey and lies next to the two aforementioned titans of science, Darwin and Newton.
Victoria and Albert Museum's photography collection
National Science and Media Museum
RPS Journal 1853-2012 online and searchable
Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné
British Photography. The Hyman Collection
The Press Photo History Project Mapping the photo agencies and photographers of Fleet Street and the UK
The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
Historic England Archive
UAL Photography and Photography and the Archive Research Centre
Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group
www.londonstereo.com London Stereoscopic Company / T. R. Williams
www.earlyphotography.co.uk British camera makers and companies
Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock.
National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.freewebs.com/jb3d/
Alfred Seaman and the Photographic Convention
Frederick Scott Archer
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