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Document number: 7528
Date: 16 Jan 1858
Recipient: GROVE William Robert
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: Royal Society, London
Last updated: 13th July 2010

4 Atholl Crescent
Edinburgh
Jany 16

Dear Grove

I am at present residing in Edinburgh –

All I can send you <1> are some impressions taken from my engraved steel plates. These I send by todays post.

N. B. galvanism is not employed in my process <2> – Of course however the gelatine image, being in basso rilievo, <3> can be Electrotyped – Mr Pretsch <4> has done this

Yours truly
H. F. Talbot


Notes:

1. This is the reply to Doc. No: 07522.

2. In October 1852 Talbot had taken out a patent [no. 565, 29 October 1852; detailed specifications filed 29 April 1853] for Improvements in the Art of Engraving. This was a contact process using gelatin sensitised by potassium bichromate, on a steel plate, the resultant image then being etched into the steel. For a detailed description, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 273–75.] However, in April 1858 Talbot took out another patent [no. 875] for an improved process that he called photoglyphic engraving. It might have been this process that is referred to here.

3. low relief

4. Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company.

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