TALBOT7084

M^r Maskelyne

Ath^{m 1}
Wedn^y Ev^g

D^r Sir

I understand the trial is put off till Wedn^y next ² perhaps Thursday, for the Convenience of the Court – therefore I should think there would be no necessity for Your coming to Town till it is convenient to you ³ to do so – I am glad to hear Your assistant has nearly succeeded ⁴ in getting a good Camera picture without any assistance beyond the Specification –

We tried to day a very simple experiment, ⁵ intended to show that there is no essential difference between the Collodion process and the Calotype – We took a sheet of ordinary paper and poured iodised collodion on it which flowed very easily over the surface. Before it was quite dry, we immersed it for 2 minutes in a bath of Nitrate Silver, took it out and poured gallic acid over it, then placed it in the Camera, formed an invisible image (very rapidly) developed the image with gallonitrate and fixed it with bromide.

This you see is the Calotype process transferred to collodion – I have always maintained that a sheet of glass, or a sheet of paper, coated with iodised collodion was nothing more than a substitute for my iodised paper. But this furnishes the proof of it, because either of them when treated by the Calotype process, gives a very good result, & nearly similar. [illegible deletion] Can any one maintain that one of these pictures is a Calotype, but that the other belongs to another order of things?

Yours truly
H. F. Talbot