Inventor
On 20 June 1834, Mungo became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1838, the Society of Arts for Scotland awarded Mungo the silver medal for his contributions to the development of the electrical telegraph.
In 1839, while experimenting with early photographic processes developed that year by William Henry Fox Talbot, Mungo discovered the light-sensitive quality of sodium dichromate. He presented his findings to the Society of Arts for Scotland on 29 May. Mungo did not attempt to patent the photographic process and published his findings in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. Others experimented with his discovery including Talbot, Edmund Becquerel, Alphonse Poitevin, and John Pouncey, all of whom patented their photographic techniques.
Mungo continued to work on photography and in 1845 the Society again awarded him a silver medal for his process for measuring the hourly variation in temperature of photographic paper. That year he also developed a variation on the calotype process to allow for shorter exposure times.
Read more about this topic: Mungo Ponton
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