ABSTRACT
This chapter experiments with the original practices of photography, some from before the word "photography" existed, and all before thiosulfate was discovered as the most suitable chemical to render a print insensitive to light. Salt, silver, paper, water, and a lot of sun are all the ingredients needed. Henry Fox Talbot first shared his photogenic drawing aka salted paper discovery with the Royal Society on January 31 1839 and when he shared the how-to's several weeks later, he did so freely and without patent. Talbot experimented with several different ways of "preserving" his pictures—his term for fixing— so they wouldn't darken in the presence of light, though he still cautioned not to put prints in direct sunlight. Salt fixing was in the literature for a while after sodium thiosulfate's discovery, but by 1857 it was said to be obsolete.
