TALBOT9972

35 Grosvenor Road,
Highbury New Park, N.
April 15^th 1873.

H. Fox Talbot Esq^re

Dear Sir,

I am exceedingly obliged to you for the letter containing so many historical particulars duly received on Good Friday morning. Since I last wrote to you Sir C. Wheatstone has been enabled to fix the date of your earliest efforts in Stereoscopic photography by finding a letter of memorandum from you when enclosing the first specimens in Oct 1840. ¹ In the following year you made grand progress & produced some of the pictures which were shown at the meeting of the Photog^c Society on the 8^th inst. ( See the report of noted in my paper at page 206 on the current number of the Society’s Journal, which of course you now receive –)²

I have lately had occasion to go over some of the Uranium printing experiments³ & am charmed with the process – The mode of fixing is so easy & satisfactory that there seems no chance of such prints fading –

I mounted a set of Nièpce’s⁴ for Exhibition – they certainly have not changed in sixteen years and look as brilliant as freshly executed silver prints.

In looking over some old papers in Sir C. Wheatstone’s back library we found a copy of your letters to the Literary Gazette in February 1841.⁵ When your Calotype seems to have assumed a practical shape – My memory in matters photographic does not go back farther than 1851 when I left the College of Chemistry to go and assist D^r Percy⁶ – By that time your process was being followed by many amateurs: – Buckle,⁷ Rosling,⁸ Bath,⁹ B. B. Turner,¹⁰ Geo Shaw¹¹ & by D^r Percy – all of whom (save the first) can I remember.

Enclosed is the little print (a direct positive) which Sir C. W. received in 1857 from M. Niepce de St. Victor – It was shown at the last meeting of the Society and we should like to know your opinion as to the mode of production. I stated that my view in favour of its having been produced by the inverted action of sunlight upon blackened Ag paper ¹² washed with iodide of potassium in excess. Wheatstone thinks it was given him as an example of the operation of “stored up light” but this will not help us much in the explanation for that turned out to be “all moonshine”.

But I must not trouble you to read a longer letter, and will only ask you to be so good as to return the little print with one or two lines if you will favour me with your views as to its origin.¹³

These kind of prints are so rare in the present day that to most of our friends the matter appeared a perfect mystery.

I remain, dear Sir, Yours very truly
John Spiller.

[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esq. F.R.S.
Lacock Abbey
near Chippenham.