In 1877 Carey Lea gave his ferrous-oxalate developer to the world, but it was not welcomed by many English photographers for negative development, though it possessed many advantages over alkaline pyro. It was, however, generally employed by foreign photographers, and is now largely in use by English photographers, especially for the development of bromide paper, either for contact printing or enlargements. In the early part of this year, Messrs. Wratten and Wainwright commenced to make gelatino-bromide dry plates, and during the hot summer months Mr. Wratten found it necessary to precipitate the gelatine emulsion with alcohol. This removed the necessity of dialysing, and helped to lessen the evils of decomposition and "frilling."
The most noticeable death in the photographic world of this year was that of Henry Fox Talbot. He was born on February the 11th, 1800, and died September 17th, 1877, thus attaining a ripe old age. I am not disposed to deny his claims to the honour of doing a great deal to forward the advancement of photography, but what strikes me very much is the mercenary spirit in which he did it, especially when I consider the position he occupied, and the pecuniary means at his command. In the first place, he rushed to the Patent Office with his gallo-nitrate developer, and then every little improvement or modification that he afterwards made was carefully protected by patent rights. With a churlishness of spirit and narrow-mindedness it is almost impossible to conceive or forgive, he tried his utmost to stop the formation of the London Photographic Society, and it was only after pressing solicitations from Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy, and first President of the London Photographic Society, that he withdrew his objections. The late Peter le Neve Foster, Secretary of the Society of Arts, told me this years after, and when it was proposed to make Fox Talbot an honorary member of the Photographic Society, Mr. Foster was opposed to the proposition. Then the action that he brought against Sylvester Laroche was unjustifiable, for there really was no resemblance between the collodion and calotype means of making a negative, except in the common use of the camera, and the means of making prints was the same as that employed by Thomas Wedgwood, while the fixing process with hyposulphite of soda was first resorted to by the Rev. J. B. Reade, on the published information of Sir John Herschel.