The salted paper process was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot, known as The Father of Modern Photography, in 1833 while he was on his honey moon. He was the first to make a silver image on paper. On his first attempts paper coated with a silver nitrate solution and exposed to light only gave a faint metallic silver image. He later discovered that by first applying salt to the paper and then coating it with the silver nitrate solution he could get a much stronger image. This is basically the same way that we make salt prints today.
While the process for making photographs may have changed over the years it is still all about capturing light.
