William Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot was born in February of 1800 and died in September of 1877. William was very smart but lacked the ability to draw causing him to try a mechanical method of capturing and retaining an image. Talbot describes how he was able to take his pictures, ”Not having with me... a camera obscura of any considerable size, I constructed one out of a large box, the image being thrown upon one end of it by a good object-glass fixed at the opposite end. The apparatus being armed with a sensitive paper, was taken out in a summer afternoon, and placed about one hundred yards from a building favorably illuminated by the sun. An or so afterwards I opened the box and I found depicted upon the paper a very distinct representation of the building, with the exception of those parts of it which lay in the shade. A little experience in this branch of the art showed me that with a smaller camera obscura the effect would be produced in a smaller time. Accordingly I had several small boxes made, in which I fixed lenses of shorter focus, and with these I obtained very perfect, but extremely small pictures..."( http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/talbot.htm). The “little boxes” were about two to three inches. In 1839 he announced the discovery at the Royal Institution of a method of “photogenic drawing”.
"A History of Photography, by Robert Leggat: TALBOT, William Henry Fox." Some of the sites managed by Robert Leggat. Web. 07 Dec. 2009. .