TALBOT4214

Lacock Abbey, Chippenham
March 17. 1841

Dear Sir

I remember that I said in my last letter ¹ to you, that Photography remained in status quo. It happened singularly enough that immediately afterwards I discovered the process to which I have given the name of Calotype – I have printed a brief account of it, & I trust that you received a copy which I sent you. ²

I enclose a specimen which had been much liked by the artists in London, it is the portrait of a young man, ³ done in one minute. The background is an ivied cloister. I have taken a patent for the Calotype, but nevertheless intend that the use of it shall be entirely free to the scientific world. I was going to send a paper to the Royal Society, explaining the process, but having been told that there are doubts whether the paper would be printed in the Transactions (on account of the patent) I have written to Christie ⁴ to request him to let me know from authority whether such is the case. If so, I shall not send the paper at all, but communicate it to some other scientific body, probably the French Institute. ⁵ There appears to me to be no end to the prospect of scientific research which Photography has opened up.

I have read with much pleasure your enthusiastic address to the Astronomical Society on the parallax of the stars. ⁶ Many reflexions are suggested by the passage p. 90 ending

The distance of every individual body in the universe from us is therefore necessarily admitted to be finite.

Although I do not know what to oppose to this assertion, still its admission is attended with very great difficulties. For if the material universe be finite, then is it but as a mere speck in illimitable space. Everywhere else, extends darkness without end – The mind finds it difficult to acquiesce in this belief, and though I know not what, I think there must be a fallacy in the passage I have quoted.

The work so ably begun by Bessel, ⁷ ought now to be the prime object of astronomy.

Would not such telescopes as L^d Oxmantown’s ⁸ be of great assistance in detecting the parallax?

Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot

Sir J. Herschel Bart
Collingwood
Hawkhurst
Kent