author
Joseph Zambra
1822–1897
Best known as the Zambra in Negretti & Zambra, he helped build one of Victorian Britain’s notable scientific-instrument firms while also working as a photographer. His life links craftsmanship, science, and early commercial photography in a particularly vivid way.
1 Audiobook
A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility
by Enrico Angelo Lodovico Negretti, Joseph Zambra
About the author
Born in Saffron Walden in 1822, Joseph Warren Zambra was an Anglo-Italian scientific instrument maker and photographer. He is most often remembered for co-founding the London firm Negretti & Zambra with Henry Negretti, a business that became well known for optical and scientific instruments in the Victorian period.
Before that partnership, Zambra worked in his father’s trade as a glass-blower, a background that helps explain his practical skill with instruments and optics. His career seems to have moved comfortably between craftsmanship, commerce, and photography, making him part of the energetic world of 19th-century inventors and image-makers.
He died in 1897. For listeners interested in the era around his work, Zambra’s story offers a glimpse of a time when photography, engineering, and public curiosity about science were all growing together.