For us today it seems normal to take photos of the world around us. We use a camera or phone almost daily, snapping pictures of friends and family, beautiful landscapes, even the food we eat.
Who would guess that all this started at Lacock Abbey in 1835 – then home to William Henry Fox Talbot, Victorian polymath. Frustrated by his inability to paint and draw, he wanted to find a way to 'fix images'.
After some experiments Talbot took an image of a window at his home Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire in 1835. This image, not much bigger than a stamp, is now celebrated as the world’s earliest surviving photographic negative.