Falmouth
Novr 21 – 1842
Dear Sir,
The paper, of which I sent you a copy, was very hastily drawn up against a meeting of our Society <1> – and is by no means so complete as I desire – Absence from home also prevented my correcting it for the press – I am very busily engaged on the subject – and I hope soon to be enabled to furnish a more detailed account of a series of phenomena which I regard as some of the most extraordinary with which we are acquainted –
No 4. The plate was warmed in one expt – in another not – the results being nearly the same – No 9 – The glasses were placed in the dark –
The pressure need not be greater than is sufficient to ensure equal contact of the paper and plate <2> –
I hope soon to be enabled to communicate to you some other interesting facts – Mr Lewis, <3> wrote to me from Manchester a few days since telling me he had made improvements – and asking a little information – I sent to him at The Post Office there – but he stated he was going to London – I do not calculate on doing much with the Calotype until the Spring when I hope to have everything very complete for the process – I write in haste – I am Dear Sir
Yours most respectfully & Obediently
Robert Hunt
Notes:
1. Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, of which Hunt became secretary in 1840.
2. It is likely that Hunt was working on photographic processes on glass, inspired by Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), astronomer & scientist. See the chapter ‘Processes on Glass Plates, by Sir John Herschel’, in Robert Hunt, A popular treatise on the art of photography, including daguerréotype, and all the new methods of producing pictures by the chemical agency of light (Glasgow: Griffin, 1841), pp. 71–72.
3. A copper-plate printer at Liverpool, with whom Hunt was developing a method of lithographic reproduction of photographs.