1352
of what made the ordinary extraordinary. It has been
estimated that Stone spent £30,000 on his photographic
exploits—which could be multiplied by 25 to gain a
contemporary value.
Peter Turner
STORY MASKELYNE, NEVIL
(1823–1911)
British photographer, chemist, mineralogist and MP
Born on 3 September 1823, in a large Wiltshire country
house, Nevil Story, as he was then called, was the eldest
son of Anthony Story, a squire and barrister, and had
three sisters and a brother. Nevil’s mother, Margaret, was
daughter of Nevil Maskelyne, an Astronomer Royal of
the previous century. Nevil Story became interested in
science while still at boarding school, through reading
a book by Mary Somerville, which he won as a school
prize, later claiming that this book had turned him into
‘a man of science.’ In the summer holidays of 1840,
George Dolland, a family friend, visited the Storys
house and showed them how to make photograms, or
‘sun pictures,’ which awoke Nevil’s enthusiasm for
photography. Besides trying out photograms, which
required perhaps half an hour of exposure to sunlight,
he experimented with his grandfather’s camera obscura,
and constructed himself a second camera from an old
cigar box. He became frustrated by the erratic results of
his photographic attempts, but this only increased his
interest in chemical reactions and the properties of light.
In 1842, Nevil went up to Wadham College, Oxford, to
read mathematics, but his energies centred on attending
lectures on scientifi c subjects such as chemistry and
optics, which were outside the Oxford examination syl-
labus at that time. To his father’s dismay, he also spent
substantial sums of money on photographic equipment
and chemicals, and evidently passed much time experi-
menting with them. When Nevil reached his twenty-fi rst
birthday, his father changed the family name to Story
Maskelyne, ready for the time when Nevil would inherit
the estate—a Maskelyne property.
After graduating from Oxford in April 1845, young
Maskelyne set up a laboratory in a thatched farmhouse
on his father’s land and experimented with calotype
photographic images. He was particularly concerned at
his own failure to record the foliage of trees in sunlight,
believing it to be due to ‘extreme red,’ now known as
infra-red, and to their green colour, (ultra-violet radia-
tion from leaves in sunlight was not then understood).
He experimented with both chemicals and fi lters, until
he achieved better results with tree photography. In
the autumn of 1845, Maskelyne was sent to study for
the Bar in London, but the law held no appeal, so he
read the latest European scientifi c articles rather than
law-books. As a result of this and of his frequenting
Faraday’s laboratory, he was thinking deeply about the
properties of light and chemicals, and wrote a perceptive
manuscript scientifi c paper concerning light-waves and
their relationship to light and electricity. He became a
member of the Committee of Visitors at the Royal Insti-
tution in London, alongside William Henry Fox Talbot,
William Grove, Faraday, and Wheatstone of the electric
telegraph. In 1847 he could have applied for a profes-
sorship in scientifi c subjects at St Andrew’s University
in Scotland, but his father, who felt a professorship was
socially beneath the family status, forbade it.
Later the same year, Sir Benjamin Brodie, an eminent
chemist, sensing Maskelyne’s despair at a lost scientifi c
opportunity, invited him to work in his private labora-
tory in London. This time, Maskelyne defi ed his father
and turned to chemistry. In 1848 he was experimenting
with albumen—egg-white—which had recently been
introduced as a medium for attaching photographic
chemicals to a glass base, and became involved with the
London Christian Socialist movement, a group of young
intellectuals aiming to help working men improve their
lot. By 1849, Maskelyne was lecturing in mineralogy at
Oxford from time to time, to help out Professor William
Buckland, whose health was failing. In 1850, he was
offered the post of Deputy Professor in Mineralogy, for
which he prepared in London, with Faraday’s help.
Back in Oxford, Maskelyne lived for the next seven
years in rooms in the basement of what was the old Ash-
molean Museum in Broad Street. During those years he
taught analytical chemistry in his basement laboratory,
which was innovative in that chemistry was normally
taught as a theoretical, rather than a practical, subject.
At this time, Maskelyne was experimenting with mica
as a stable base for photographic negatives, and was
taking interesting and lively portraits of his own Oxford
circle, using chemicals to achieve better contrast than
usual for the time. He was successfully using collodion
on glass soon after the process was invented and lived
a sociable life, entertaining young like-minded Oxford
friends in his basement. They were almost all involved
in the struggle to improve the status and recognition
of science at Oxford. In 1857 Maskelyne met Thereza
Llewelyn, herself a keen amateur photographer, whose
parents were both photographic enthusiasts, and the
couple soon became engaged. While staying with her
family in South Wales, whose wealth derived from
coal mines and land-ownership, he was invited to a
house-party at Charlton Park, Malmesbury, where he
took some fi ne photographic studies of the fashionable
assembled company.
Marriage necessitated leaving Oxford for better-paid
employment, and he found himself back in London,
this time as Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum.
Maskelyne tried to establish a small chemical and pho-
STONE, SIR JOHN BENJAMIN
