TALBOT7086

My dear Sir

My assistant ¹ has done a picture which is I think quite satisfactory & which I send you to get Henneman ² to print a copy or two from. The jury ³ would not understand the Negative. I have removed the Iodide & Bromide myself by Hyposulphite.

In questioning him to day – he can talk & understand English I think quite sufficiently ⁴ for a Court – I find that on one occasion some months ago he Saw me prepare & develope a picture, but, though I had forgotten the circumstance, & I now remember it & also remember that the process I adopted was rather different in its manipulatory details from your common process.

I did not use brushes, or warmth in developing & if I am not mistaken my Iodized paper was made by precipitating the Iodide of Silver by Water from its solution in Iodide of Potassium –

However a counsel might puzzle a jury over such a point & it is for you to consider how far his evidence will be valuable to you. Practically the process was new to him from beginning to end when I put your specification into his hand.

As to Mr Hunt, ⁵ he has written so much nonsense that it is no wonder that he has forgotten the glowing terms in which he describes your discovery in one of his earliest productions; in which he speaks of the marvellous discovery by you of the possibility of a latent image being found in the Camera! – see Griffins Scientific Miscellany 1841 – Photography – page 4. ⁶

It is true that at the end of that book & obviously after that page was written, he describes an impracticable process of his own in which Bromide of Silver is to have an image developed on it by Vapour of Quick-silver. Why does Mr Hunt say nothing in that work of Mr Reade’s process, ⁷ if it were known?

This Mr Hunt ought to be shewn up. The means of doing so are easily reached. Ask every scientific man you put in as a witness what Mr Hunts thousand announcements of discoveries come to – I am sure no one person will give him a word of support.

For my own part, though I believe him to be really an amiable man, I have long been out of patience with him for the months of toil I wasted in trying to work his processes & never succeeded in bringing one of them to completion.

The book of his ⁸ which I have referred to is worth your reading to shew how much he knew about Photography at the time he wrote it.

Believe me always Yours very truly
Nevil Story Maskelyne.

Ashmolean. ⁹
Friday.