Henry Fox Talbot1800–1877
Screens that turn tone into dots, 1852
English inventor of the calotype who patented the ruled screen that lets a printing press render continuous tone as varying dot area.
Dot Relief
One dot per cell, sized by a surface nobody drew. The grid is dead flat and the sheet rolls like beaten metal.
About this pattern
Halftone as a surface · dot gain and shading
Every dot sits exactly on its lattice point; the only thing that varies is how big it is. That is enough, because tone is read before position: a run of swelling dots is taken as a surface turning toward the light long before the eye counts anything. The height field is made of sines that complete a whole number of cycles across the sheet, so the relief continues through every edge.
Behind the mathematics