TOM WEDGWOOD, THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHER by [WEDGWOOD]. Litchfield, R.B - 1903: AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE, HIS DISCOVERY AND HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, INCLUDING THE LETTERS OF COLERIDGE TO THE WEDGWOODS. AND AN EXAMINATION OF THE ACCOUNTS OF ALLEGED EARLIER PHOTOGRAPHIC DISCOVERIES.

London: Duckworth and Co, 1903. First edition. 8vo., 271 pp., frontispiece with tissue guard, illustrations from photos, t.e.g. The publisher's cloth is faded; slight bruise to the upper board tip, and there is foxing, primarily on the first and last few leaves; else very good. Thomas Wedgwood (1771 - 1805) was the son of the famous English ceramicist and industrialist Josiah Wedgwood. Sickly as a youth, he was well tutored at home in science, art, philosophy and literature. In 1790, he was experimenting with nitrate of silver; he wrote of his observations on light and optics and "Time, Space, and Motion" an interest he shared with his close friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At age 24, Wedgwood co-authored with Humphry Davy, "An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings Upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light Upon Nitrate of Silver" published in the first issue of JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN, June 1802. Despite this published record of their ability to make cameraless photographic prints, they were unable to discover a fixative, and all visual proof vanished. The appendices include the first English translation of Schulze's 1727 report on the darkening of silver salts when exposed to light.

See: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY, p. 1482 - 1483. Roosens and Salu No. 10963.