Photography. [f. Gr. καλός beautiful + τύπος type.] The name given by Fox Talbot to the process of producing photographs, invented by him in 1841, sometimes also called Talbotype. The picture was produced by the action of light upon silver iodide, the latent image being subsequently developed and fixed by hyposulphite of soda. Also attrib., as in calotype process, picture, etc.
1841. Fox Talbot, Specif. Patent No. 8842. 3. The paper thus prepared, and which I term ‘calotype paper,’ is placed in a camera.
1845. Athenæum, 22 Feb., 202. The sharpness of the outline of the Calotype pictures is … inferior to that of the Daguerreotypes.
1881. Times, 4 Jan., 3/5. Calotype, or the waxed paper process, with its development by means of silver, superseded the daguerreotype, in which the image was developed by mercury vapour; and, again, calotype, in which the foundation was paper, was ousted from its position by Archer’s collodion process, in which the paper picture gave way to transparent glass and a substratum of collodion.
Hence Calotypic a., Calotypist.
1854. Scoffern, in Orr’s Circ. Sc., Chem. 88. Paper suitable for taking Calotypic impressions.
1855. Browning, Mesmerism, ix. I imprint her fast On the void at last As the sun does whom he will By the calotypist’s skill.
