He was born in 1771 in England. Was the fourth child of Josiah Wedgwood, who was one of the most successful english potter. He was of course, expected to work in the family business but instead of that, he developed an incredible love for art and images, which settled the ground for him to become one of the most creative early experimenters in the field of photography.
He dedicated his early adulthood to investigate about children and how they get all the information about the world through their eyes, and started wondering about light and images. He decided that he was going to capture and reply images on durable media, like paper. For that purpose he used light-sensitive chemicals. He is the first person that historicians could confirmed that used light-sensitive chemicals in orden to reproduce one image on paper.
Sometime around 1790 he thought about the possibility to dye paper and white leather with silver nitrate. He got to the conclusion that leather was more light-sensitive than paper. Those simple experiments are now considered as one of the first photography trials.
So much has been said about his experiments, especialy about the participation of James Watt, who was another chemical and engineer and a really good friend of Thomas. They exchanged a lot of letters about Thomas idea to replicate images.
His personal story was really sad. He had an unknown illness that didn't allowed him to spent much time away from his home, and it killed him at the age of 34. He was extremely young, even if we consider the century in which he was born. It's not settled if the first photography we know is his or Fox Talbot's. Even though that probably won't be confirmed, it's a fact that his experiments allowed so many others to try and started diving into the craft of photography.
MORE ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY STORY
What happened after Thomas Wedgwood died? and before? Here's a video about the story of photography
