Contact printed from a paper negative. The negative was placed on top of a sheet of paper prepared with sodium chloride and silver nitrate, then exposed to daylight to create the print. For that reason, talbotypes were also known as a sun pictures. Although talbotypes lacked the detail of daguerreotypes, the existence of a negative made it straightforward to create multiple copies.

In 1841, at the request of Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the stereograph, Henry Collen produced the first photographic stereo pairs using William Henry Talbot's process. Unlike the stereocard shown here, these experimental views for Wheatstone would have been separate photographs for use in Wheatstone's reflecting stereoscope, which was a large, table-mounted device intended only for scientific use. The first commercial stereocards (talbotypes and daguereotypes) appeared in 1851.