35 Grosvenor Road,
Highbury New Park, N.
April 15th 1873.
H. Fox Talbot Esqre
Dear Sir,
I am exceedingly obliged to you for the letter containing so many historical particulars duly received on Good Friday morning. Since I last wrote to you Sir C. Wheatstone has been enabled to fix the date of your earliest efforts in Stereoscopic photography by finding a letter of memorandum from you when enclosing the first specimens in Oct 1840. <1> In the following year you made grand progress & produced some of the pictures which were shown at the meeting of the Photogc Society on the 8th inst. ( See the report of noted in my paper at page 206 on the current number of the Society’s Journal, which of course you now receive –)<2>
I have lately had occasion to go over some of the Uranium printing experiments<3> & am charmed with the process – The mode of fixing is so easy & satisfactory that there seems no chance of such prints fading –
I mounted a set of Nièpce’s<4> for Exhibition – they certainly have not changed in sixteen years and look as brilliant as freshly executed silver prints.
In looking over some old papers in Sir C. Wheatstone’s back library we found a copy of your letters to the Literary Gazette in February 1841.<5> When your Calotype seems to have assumed a practical shape – My memory in matters photographic does not go back farther than 1851 when I left the College of Chemistry to go and assist Dr Percy<6> – By that time your process was being followed by many amateurs: – Buckle,<7> Rosling,<8> Bath,<9> B. B. Turner,<10> Geo Shaw<11> & by Dr Percy – all of whom (save the first) can I remember.
Enclosed is the little print (a direct positive) which Sir C. W. received in 1857 from M. Niepce de St. Victor – It was shown at the last meeting of the Society and we should like to know your opinion as to the mode of production. I stated that my view in favour of its having been produced by the inverted action of sunlight upon blackened Ag paper <12> washed with iodide of potassium in excess. Wheatstone thinks it was given him as an example of the operation of “stored up light” but this will not help us much in the explanation for that turned out to be “all moonshine”.
But I must not trouble you to read a longer letter, and will only ask you to be so good as to return the little print with one or two lines if you will favour me with your views as to its origin.<13>
These kind of prints are so rare in the present day that to most of our friends the matter appeared a perfect mystery.
I remain, dear Sir, Yours very truly
John Spiller.
[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esq. F.R.S.
Lacock Abbey
near Chippenham.
Notes:
1. WHFT's note to Wheatstone has not been traced. This would have been a month after he discovered the calotype, with its much shortened exposure times, but before he disclosed the process to the public. However, Wheatstone seems to have been remembering correctly - see Doc. No: 04172.
2. Spiller, "On the History of some Early Photographs, Uranium Prints, &c.," The Photographic Journal, v. 15 no. 240, 10 April 1873, pp. 205-207. Spiller showed "some of Mr. Talbot's early work printed on plain salted paper, several of these pictures being taken in pairs (at a somewhat wide angle) for use in Sir Charles Wheatstone's reflecting stereoscope. Some of these, fixed with bromide, were produced as far back as 1840 and 1841."
3. Spiller referred to Niépce de St. Victor's "On a Process of Obtaining Photgoraphic Proofs in Red, Green, Violet, and Blue," in the Comptes Rendus for 1859, p. 740.
4. Claude Félix Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870), photographic experimenter.
5. WHFT, "Calotype (Photogenic) Drawing," The Literary Gazette. no. 1256, 13 February 1841, p. 108 [see Doc. No: 04191] and "Calotype(Photogenic) Drawing," no. 1258, 27 February 1841, pp. 139-140 [see Doc. No: 04195].
6. John Percy (1817-1889).
7. Samuel Buckle (1808-1860).
8. Alfred Rosling (1802-1882).
9. Possibly William Bath (1794-1878), a landscape painter and exhibitor in the Royal Academy who operated a photographic studio in London from 1860-1865; his photographic work might have commenced much earlier.
10. Benjamin Brecknell Turner (1815-1894).
11. George Shaw (1818-1904).
12. AG = silver.
13. WHFT was not able to identify it - see Doc. No: 09974.