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Document number: 4252
Date: 05 May 1841
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BREWSTER David
Collection: National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
Collection number: 1937-4878
Last updated: 26th April 2010

Dear Sir,

I have received safely your interesting letter, <1> and will take special care that your process <2> continues a secret <3> till you wish it made known. I shall have great pleasure in trying it when you have leisure to communicate to me the other half. <4>

The sensitiveness of the Calotype Paper to Moonlight is a most extraordinary fact, and cannot fail to excite great interest as a scientific fact. That the chemical rays shd shew themselves by such marked effects, & with out condensation, while the heating rays cannot be rendered effective by the most powerful Lens & Specula is truly wonderful.<5>

I should like to know if the two Portraits <6> you were so kind as to send me were made by the Positive or the Negative process.

I am Dear Sir Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster

St Leonards
St Andrews
May 5th 1841

H.F. Talbot Esqr


Notes:

1. Letter not located.

2. That is, the calotype process.

3. See Doc. No: 04147. The delay in publication was essential because WHFT intended to take out a Patent on his process.

4. As was common practice as a security measure, the information had been sent half at a time.

5. There was considerable interest at this time - and little understanding - of the nature of the light reflected from the moon.

6. Five early photographic portraits by WHFT can be found in Brewster’s album. For these images see: ‘A Man Standing in a Doorway’, taken 1840 or 1841, reproduced in Graham Smith, Disciples of Light: Photographs in the Brewster Album (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990), p. 140; ‘Lady Elisabeth Feilding’, taken August 1841, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 32; ‘Lady Elisabeth Feilding as Paolina Borghese’, Schaaf 3693, taken 20 April 1842, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 136; ‘Workman at Lacock’, taken 9 April 1842, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 137; and ‘Nicolaas Henneman’, taken 1842 or 1843, reproduced in Disciples of Light, p. 37. [See also Doc. No: 04247].