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Document number: 4530
Date: 10 Jun 1842
Recipient: MARTIUS Carl Friedrich Philipp von
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: Archiv der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Munich
Collection number: 128
Last updated: 26th February 2013

à M. le Professeur Martius, Secrétaire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences.
Munich
le 10 Juin 1842

Monsieur

J’ai l’honneur de vous offrir quelques échantillons photographiques pour etre présentés à l’Académie qui les accueillera j’espère avec indulgence.<1> La plupart sont faits par ma méthode nouvelle, que j’ai appellée Calotype;<2> les autres par la méthode ancienne<3> que j’ai découverte en 1834 et publiée en Janv. et Févr. 1839 <4>

Agréez Monsieur, l’expression de toute ma considération.
H. F. Talbot

Translation:

to Professor Martius, Secretary of the Royal Academy of Science
Munich
10 June 1842

Sir

I have the honour of giving you some photographic specimens to be presented to the Academy which I hope will welcome them warmly. Most of them were made with my new method, which I call Calotype; the others were produced using the old method which I discovered in 1834 and published in January and February 1839 –

Please accept, Sir, my most sincere regards.
H. F. Talbot

Notes:

1. Eleven of these photogenic drawings and calotypes are still preserved in the Munich Academy of Sciences - a number of them are reproduced in Ulrich Pohlmann, Alöis Locherer, Photografien 1845-1855 (Munich: Schermer/Mosel, 1998).

2. Preserved with the letter is a copy of WHFT's privately printed pamphlet, The Process of Calotype Photogenic Drawing (Printed by J. L. Cox & Sons, London, 1841); this paper had originally been read to the Royal Society on 10 June 1841.

3. Photogenic drawing.

4. WHFT, 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. Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839, privately published (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839) and printed in The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art. No. 1150, 2 February 1839, contained WHFT’s letter to the Editor, of 30 January 1839, announcing his process of photogenic drawing. See Doc. No: 03782. WHFT promptly revealed his methods in "An Account of the Processes employed in Photogenic Drawing", read before The Royal Society on 21 February 1839 and published in the Literary Gazette, no. 1153, 23 February 1839, pp. 123-124. A synopsis was also published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, v. 4 no. 37, 21 February 1839, pp. 124-126; see Doc. No: 03814.