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Document number: 04285
Date: 29 Jun 1841
Dating: see 04286
Postmark: indistinct
Watermark: 1840
Recipient: ROBERTON John David
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: Royal Society, London
Collection number: MC3.178
Last updated: 27th April 2010

Dear Sir

I wish my paper <1> to be omitted from the proceedings, all but the title of it. If you cannot do this on the authority of this letter, I request you to apply to one of the Secretaries for the necessary authorisation.

Yours truly

H. F. Talbot

Mr Roberton
R. Socy
Somerset House
London


Notes:

1. This explained WHFT’s calotype process. He was annoyed because the Committee of Papers, acting on a false rumour that WHFT had already published elsewhere, rejected his paper for their Transactions. In the end, it was published in the Proceedings as "An Account of Some Recent Improvements in Photography," v. 4 no. 48, 1841, pp. 312-315. WHFT's angry letter to Sir John Herschel about this matter is Doc. No: 04293. For a more complete story, see Larry J Schaaf, Out of the Shadows; Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 117-122.