Lincolns Inn <1>
25 July 1859
My dear Sir
I send you copy of a letter <2> recd today from Fry & Loxley <3> – In consequence of this letter, I have looked back to the correspondence with these Gentn in Octr 1857 and I find that we did in effect offer to purchase Mr Pretsch’s Patent <4> by letter of the 14th of that month – and on the 24th in fair name the sum of £200 on the consideration that there remained due to Govt £50 at the end of the 3rd Year and £100 <5> at the expiron of the 7th Year – It would appear that the £50 has been since paid by the Compy and the £100 is still due, but You will observe there is no notice of this in Fry & Loxley’s letter of Saturday.
The offer was made without prejudice & not having been accepted leaves You in all respects free to entertain or not as present circes see render expedient.
Of this You will judge it may be that Your subsequent pursuit of the proposed object renders the resumption of the subject inadvisable altogr or may make the invention of Mr P. Pretsch less valuable in Your estimation than it was in Octr 1857.
At all events it would seem that Mr P. P’s visit to me last week and his letter to You <6> was not without his knowledge of what was coming
believe me to remain My dear Sir Ever Your’s faithfully
J. H Bolton
Wm H Fox Talbot Esqre
Notes:
1. One of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar. Bolton had his chambers [lawyer’s offices and, at the time, living-quarters also] there.
2. Letter not located.
3. Solicitors for the proprietors of the Patent Photogalvanographic Company with whom Talbot had been in dispute regarding his patent for photographic engraving. See Doc. No: 07807. The company had ceased trading in 1857.
4. Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company had patented a process for photographic engraving that was broadly similar to that of Talbot [ Improvements in the Art of Engraving, Patent No. 565 of 29 October 1852] in that the first part used gelatine and potassium bichromate; Pretsch’s second part, however, used the electrotype process. Talbot had claimed it infringed his patent. The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company), based on the work of Pretsch, was located in Holloway Road, Islington, London, from 1856-1857. Pretsch took over as manager and Roger Fenton (1819–1869), photographer & lawyer, was a partner and their chief photographer. Starting in late 1856, they published a serial portfolio, Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, illustratated with photogalvanographs derived from several photographer's works. Photogalvanography was uncomfortably closely based on elements of WHFT’s patented 1852 Photographic Engraving but, unlike Talbot, the plates were heavily retouched by hand. Compounding the legal objections of Talbot, their former manager, Duncan Campbell Dallas, set up a competing company to produce the Dallastype. The company collapsed and near the end of 1860 Pretsch, out of money, allowed his patent to lapse. A public appeal was launched in 1861 to assist him but he returned to Vienna in 1863 in ill health, going back to the Imperial Printing Establishment, but finally succumbing to cholera.
5. See Doc. No: 07475.
6. See Doc. No: 07917.