Month: November 2023

Inventions

Photographic negatives

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) from Dorset was a polymath but lacked one skill, namely draughtmanship, and he was even frustrated with […]

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) from Dorset was a polymath but lacked one skill, namely draughtmanship, and he was even frustrated with his attempts at using tracing devices to make illustrations for his various research papers. Luckily, his knowledge of chemistry enabled him, in the mid-1830s, to invent a method whereby sunlight would imprint an image for him, albeit in negative, on paper coated in salt, then silver nitrate and salt again. He then devised another process to turn this negative into a positive as many times as desired.

He later discovered that exposure need only be a few seconds to create a latent image which could then be developed in a gallic acid mixture. He patented this in 1841 as a ‘calotype’. His friend and fellow polymath, Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) from Buckinghamshire, suggested using hyposulphite of soda as a fixer and this is still used today for black-and-white photography.

Fox Talbot published the first book of photographs, ‘The Pencil of Nature’ (1844) to demonstrate how his “photogenic drawings”, as he called them, could be used. A new type of artistic expression was born, as well as the means for producing authentic historical records. In Talbot’s words, “It is a little bit of magic realised”.

(Images LtoR: Fox Talbot & photograph taken by him in 1842, both at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

12/11/2023
3 min
1 year
221 words

History

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp

Camping out year-round in British weather is not recommended, but the women who decided to do just that outside RAF Greenham Common […]

Camping out year-round in British weather is not recommended, but the women who decided to do just that outside RAF Greenham Common in 1981-2000 were utterly committed to their cause. They were alarmed at the threat of nuclear war and particularly the USA’s siting of cruise missiles at two UK locations. Consequently, what began as a 40-strong march from Cardiff to the airbase in Berkshire became the country’s longest-running women’s protest.

*Image of scaremongering leaflet issued during the Cold War: Mikey at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0*

Greenham Common’s airfield was utilised in the Battle of Britain and by the late 1970s the Americans had installed state-of-the-art equipment and built the longest runway in Europe there. Now a country park measuring 4.5 x 0.5 miles, in 1982 30,000 women staged ‘Embrace the Base’ by holding hands all around its fence. In 1983 it was ‘Reflect the Base’ with 50,000 women holding up mirrors.

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp also gained publicity when they resisted police trying to remove them on several occasions and some were arrested. Critics also accused them of abandoning their families; nevertheless, even after the missiles were removed in 1991 after the dissolution of the USSR, the women continued their vigil in protest against the Trident programme. Today there is a commemorative garden acknowledging their efforts where the camp once stood.

(Top image from ‘Embrace the Base’ in December 1982: Alan Stanton at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

04/11/2023
3 min
1 year
237 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.