Photography Pioneer
Dubbed as godfather of photography, Thomas Wedgwood, born on May 14, 1771, in Etruria, Staffordshire, England, is credited with his major contribution to photography and technology. He is considered the first man to develop a method to copy visible images chemically to permanent media. He was the son of a potter, Josiah Wedgwood, a potter and an early experimenter with Sir Humphry Davy in photography.
He was born into a long line of pottery manufacturers, and was educated at Etruria. A love for art was instilled in his growing years. His short life was also blest associating with painters, sculptors, and poets, to whom he was able to be a patron after he inherited his father's wealth in 1795. One of them was a good friend, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by which Wedgwood arranged to have an annuity of £150 in 1798 so Coleridge could devote himself to poetry and philosophy.
He died on July 10, 1805, aged 34.
Resource:
Litchfield, Richard Buckley (1903). Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer; 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 accounts of alleged earlier photographic discoveries. London, Duckworth and Co. Public domain, available free at archive.org.
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