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Document number: 07788
Date: 17 Jan 1859
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: CROOKES William
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA59-002
Last updated: 11th December 2009

La Belle Sauvage Yard,
Ludgate Hill, E.C.
20 Mornington Road
N.W.
London, <1>
Jany 17 1859.

Dear Sir

You will perhaps remember that a few weeks before Xmas we had some correspondence respecting a proposal of M. Paul Pretsch <2> to issue some specimens of his Photogalvanographic process in the “Photographic News”; and in consequence of your statement that his plan was considered by you as an infringement of the previous patent which you had taken for photo: engraving, Messrs Petter & Galpin <3> & myself determined not to accept Herr Pretsch’s offer of some plates.

In the last number of the Liverpool Photographic Journal there is a statement that their next number, (published on the 1st of February next) will be illustrated by this process from a plate of M. Pretsch’s. Am I asking too much of your courtesy, to beg that you will use your influence in preventing such publication. I know not what the legal hearings of the case are, but I should think a line from you to the Publisher
Mr H Greenwood <4>
32 Castle Street
Liverpool
would be quite sufficient to prevent such a step being taken

Believe me very truly yours
William Crookes.

H. F. Talbot Esqre


Notes:

1. ‘London’ part of the original printed letterhead, not struck through, sender’s address added above.

2. Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company requested to publish photolithographs in the Photographic News [See Doc. No: 07755]. The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company), based on the work of Pretsch, was located in Holloway Road, Islington, London, from 1856-1857. Pretsch took over as manager and Roger Fenton (1819–1869), photographer & lawyer, was a partner and their chief photographer. Starting in late 1856, they published a serial portfolio, Photographic Art Treasures, or Nature and Art Illustrated by Art and Nature, illustratated with photogalvanographs derived from several photographer's works. Photogalvanography was uncomfortably closely based on elements of WHFT’s patented 1852 Photographic Engraving but, unlike Talbot, the plates were heavily retouched by hand. Compounding the legal objections of Talbot, their former manager, Duncan Campbell Dallas, set up a competing company to produce the Dallastype. The company collapsed and near the end of 1860 Pretsch, out of money, allowed his patent to lapse. A public appeal was launched in 1861 to assist him but he returned to Vienna in 1863 in ill health, going back to the Imperial Printing Establishment, but finally succumbing to cholera.

3. Petter & Galpin Co, London printers.

4. Henry Greenwood, editor, The British Journal of Photography, and stationer in Liverpool.