1379
David; Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé; Faraday,
Michael; Herschel, Sir John Frederick William;
Wedgwood, Thomas; Royal Photographic Society;
Societies, groups, institutions, and exhibitions in the
UK; Illustrated Books illustrated with photographs:
1840s; Books and manuals about photography:
1840s; Great Britain; Developing; Exposure;
Fixing, Processing and Washing; Latent Image;
Light-Sensitive Chemicals; Paper and Photographic
Paper; Calotype and Talbotype; Photogenic Drawing
Negative; Wet Collodion Negative; Daguerreotype;
Salted Paper Print; Camera design: 1. 1830s–
1840s; Court Cases and Photography; History: 1.
Antecedents and proto-photography up to 1826;
History: 2. 1826–1839; History: 3. 1840s; History:
- 1850s; Patents; Laroche, Martin; and Wollaston,
William Hyde.
Further Reading
Arnold, H. J. P., William Henry Fox Talbot: pioneer of photog-
raphy and man of science, 177.
Buckland, G., Fox Talbot and the invention of photography,
1980.
Schaaf, L. J., Out of the shadows: Herschel, Talbot and the
invention of photography, 1992. (From Original Manuscript
material belonging to the William Henry Fox Talbot Trust.)
Dictionary of National Biography, entry by L.J. Schaaf, 2003.
TAUNT, HENRY WILLIAM (1842–1922)
Henry Taunt was born in Oxford, and at the age of
14 was apprenticed to portrait photographer Edward
Bracher. When Bracher sold the business in 1863, the
new owners retained Taunt as manager, but four years
later he left to establish his own studio.
One of his fi rst publishing ventures in the late 1860s
was the fi rst photographically illustrated guide to the
River Thames—later to be followed by over fi fty other
publications. The second edition of his New Map of the
River Thames, published in 1873, was illustrated with
eighty original photographs and hand tipped onto the
pages. Talented at self-promotion, he generated demand
for his work by giving lantern-slide lectures throughout
the area.
Using wet collodion during the early years of his
career, he is reputed to have carried all his equipment,
materials, and darktent on a small boat as he explored
the river.
In addition to illustrated books, Taunt & Co. pub-
lished many albums of views of the Thames and the
surrounding areas.
Taunt was politically active throughout much of his
career, and in 1880 became involved in a campaign
to improve Oxford’s water supply, at a time when it
was reportedly possible for live shrimp to be delivered
through the cold water tap. He participated in this cause
by threatening to photograph the shrimp and publish
the images.
John HannavyTAUPENOT, JEAN MARIE (1822–1856)
Originally from Givry, in Burgundy, Jean Marie Tau-
penot was born the 15th August 1822. He studied
physics and biology. His work about Montpellier and
the Cevennes’s geology (south of France) gave him the
doctor graduate in natural science in 1850.
He became professor of physics, fi rst in Romans (in
the south of France), then in Chaumont (in the Cham-
pagne area).
Eventually, he was named professor of physics and
chemistry in the military high school of La Flèche, the
Prytanée Impérial Militaire in 1853. There began his
interest in photography: he setted up in this school the
laboratory where he worked the next three years.
He invented and revealed to the Société française de
photographie a dry collodion process in 1855, to which
he gave his name. At this time, he became involved in
this society.
The same year he presented to the French Academy of
Sciences a little photographic device called “chercheur
photographique” or a photographic view fi nder.
After his wedding in 1856, he carried on his re-
searches in geology and natural sciences, inventing a
wind gauge.
Jean Marie Taupenot died the same year, at the age
of thirty-two, the 15th October, in La Flèche.
Jean Marie Taupenot was not a professional pho-
tographer, he was a scientist involved in photography
by passion.
The photographic process invented by Taupenot gave
to the unknown professor a world-wide acknowledge-
ment. At this time, the best photographic technique
was the Wet-plate or collodion process, an invention of
several persons, especially Frederick Scott Archer, an
English photographer, and Gustave Le Gray, in 1851.
The negative was on a glass plate coated with collogion,
a mixture of guncotton and ether. It was quite fast (only
a few seconds to pose), but all the process had to be
fulfi lled before the complete drying of the glass plate.
Practical for photographic studios, it was very complex
to take photographs outside.
For this kind of photographs, another useful process
was the negative albumen process proposed by Niepce
de Saint-Victor in 1847. The glass plate was coated with
iodide and bromide of potassium.
Jean Marie Taupenot used to employ both processes,
wet collodion and albumen, but “he was impatient of
the slowness of the albumin and perhaps more of the
defect of solidity of collodion” (“il était impatienté des