[Note added in another hand - Jerdan's?:]
Mr Talbot
March 39
Queen Ann St. <1>
Saturday
Dear Sir
As I should be sorry to trespass too far upon your columns, I will mention the articles which I proposed to send you on Monday or Tuesday next, in order that, if it should appear too much, you can tell me which of them you would prefer to have.
1. Copy of my paper read to the R. Society last Thursday.<2> It is short.
2. Translation of a part of a letter from M. Biot <3> to myself, containing his experiments upon my new sensitive paper; of which he seems to entertain quite as favorable an opinion as I do myself. Sir John Herschel <4> also concurs in this.
3. Translation of M Daguerre’s <5> statement respecting his own claims &c M. Niepce, from the Comptes Rendus <6> – if I can procure the loan of a copy
Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.
2. This was WHFT's “Note respecting a new kind of sensitive paper,” one based on on bromides, read before the Royal Society on 21 March 1839. His letter on this was published under the heading of "Fine Arts. The Photogenic Art" in The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c, no. 1158, 30 March 1839, pp. 202-203. [See Doc. No: 03852].
3. Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862), French scientist was making many experiments that WHFT would have found interesting. Probably he means here work on either phosphorescence or on research into the characteristics of the solar spectrum affecting light sensitive materials. [See Doc. No: 03853].
4. Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), astronomer & scientist.
5. Reports of the process used by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist, showman & inventor and his former partner Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), photographic inventor were still few at this time, and the working process of the daguerreotype was not divulged until August 1839.
6. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’ de l’Académie des Sciences.