N Negative/Positive 171 The first images on light-sensitive material showed inversion of the expected tones. As the materials all went dark where light fell on them, they showed black where the subject was white. In the late 1830s, William Henry Fox Talbot was first to understand and perfect the making of positive prints from an original exposed image. Sir John Herschel gave these the names `negative' and `positive'. The importance of Fox Talbot's work was not just that a photographic image could be produced but that the negative/positive system promised many copies from one original.