I finally made it to another club meeting yesterday and had the pleasure to listen to Anne McCauley, professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University. Her talk was about William Henry Fox Talbot and the invention of photographic vision.
According to her talk, Talbot was a scientist with not much of an artistic idea or talent, but with an enormous drive for exploration and experimentation. In fact, most techniques photographers use today had been pioneered by Talbot. The talk had a little psycho analytical touch about why he did certain things which spiced it all up.
I'm still far away from seeing the big picture of the history of photography, but this one is a nice piece in the puzzle.