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Document number: 3774
Date: 25 Jan 1839
Dating: answered 27 Jan 1839
Recipient: HERSCHEL John Frederick William
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: Royal Society, London
Collection number: HS 17:277
Last updated: 30th April 2012

Answd Jan 27/39 <1>

44 Queen Ann St <2> Cavendish Square
Janry 25th 1839

My Dear Sir

Having a paper to be read next week before the Royal Society, respecting a new Art of Design <3> which I discovered about five years ago, viz. the possibility of fixing upon paper the image formed by a Camera Obscura; or rather, I should say, causing it to fix itself, I should be most happy to show to you specimens of this curious process. If you could not make it convenient to call here, Slough has now become so accessible by the railway that I would take a drive there any day if you would appoint an hour

Believe me Yours most truly
H. F. Talbot


Notes:

1. Written in Herschel’s hand. [See Doc. No: 03775].

2. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.

3. This was read 31 January 1839 and published privately (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839) and in various journals, ‘Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil’.