Thomas Wedgwood (14 May 1771 – 10 July 1805) was an English photographer and inventor. He is most widely known as an early experimenter in the field of photography. He is the first person known to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. His practical experiments yielded only shadow image photograms that were not light-fast, but his conceptual breakthrough and partial success have led some historians to call him "the first photographer".
Life Thomas Wedgwood was the fifth child of eight born to Josiah Wedgwood and his wife Sarah, née Wedgwood, his third cousin. His father was the founder of the Wedgwood company. He was an uncle of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, through his sister Susannah Wedgwood, who married Robert Darwin. He was born in Etruria, Staffordshire, now part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in England. Wedgwood grew up and was educated at Etruria, and was instilled from his youth with a love for art. He also spent much of his short life associating with painters, sculptors, and poets, to whom he was able to be a patron after he inherited his portion of his father's wealth in 1795. As a young adult, Wedgwood became interested in the best method of educating children, and spent time studying infants. From his observations, he concluded that most of the information that young brains absorbed came through the eyes, and were thus related to light and images. Wedgwood never married and had no children. His biographer notes that "neither his extant letters nor family tradition tell us of his caring for any woman outside the circle of his relations" and that he was "strongly attracted" to musical and sensitive young men. In imperfect health as a child and a chronic invalid as an adult, he died in the county of Dorset at the age of 34. His illness has been linked to that of his famous nephew, Charles Darwin.
Experiments with photography Wedgwood is the first person reliably documented to have used light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette images on durable media such as paper, and the first known to have attempted to photograph the image formed in a camera obscura. The date of his first experiments in photography is unknown, but he is believed to have indirectly advised James Watt (1736–1819) on the practical details prior to 1800. In a letter that has been variously dated to 1790, 1791 and 1799, Watt wrote to Josiah Wedgwood:
Dear Sir, I thank you for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments... In his many experiments, possibly with advice on chemistry from his tutor Alexander Chisholm and members of the Lunar Society, Wedgwood used paper and white leather coated with silver nitrate. The leather proved to be more light-sensitive. His primary objective had been to capture real-world scenes with a camera obscura, but those attempts were unsuccessful. He did succeed in using exposure to direct sunlight to capture silhouette images of objects in contact with the treated surface, as well as the shadow images cast by sunlight passing through paintings on glass. In both cases, the sunlit areas rapidly darkened while the areas in shadow did not. Wedgwood met chemist Humphry Davy (1778–1829) at the Pneumatic Clinic in Bristol, where Wedgwood was being treated. Davy wrote up his friend's work for publication in London's Journal of the Royal Institution (1802), titling it “An Account of a method of copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles, by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With Observations by H. Davy.” The paper was published and detailed Wedgwood's procedures and accomplishments, as well as Davy's own variations of them. In 1802 the Royal Institution was not the venerable force it is today and its Journal was:
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