Lincoln’s Inn <1>
21st Oct 1857
My dear Sir
Mr Loxley <2> has just been with me – his people find a difficulty in answering our proposal <3> or rather question until we tell them what sum of money we are willing to pay for these Patent rights.
I answered that this was just what I could not do but that my understanding of your meaning is “Since, Gentlemen, you are not disposed to lay out any further capital upon the Invention <4> and are willing to throw it up for a nominal sum, [nominal havg regard to the large sum you state to have expended on it] I will, if you please take it off your hands and turn it to account by such improvements as will in other hands give it greater conditions of prosperity” –
Loxley states that his clients have received the communication with an earnest desire to accede to it, if the sum to be offered should prove acceptable –
I rejoined that as we could not tell what the circumstances and moving causes were on their part which would render acceptable the sum we might name, it might happen that when offered it was altogether inadmissible as below the mark.
Before he left however & as well to save time & breath I intimated my own conviction (but without the any other basis than that of pure conjecture) that you would not be well advised in exceeding £500. but that this was purely my own view & not yours.
The works he tells me are entirely stopped. <5>
You will be good enough therefore to instruct me as to the next steps to be taken
Ever your faithful servt
J. H Bolton
Wm H. Fox Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. One of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar. Bolton had his chambers [lawyer’s offices and, at the time, living-quarters also] there.
2. Of Fry and Loxley, solicitors for the proprietors of the Patent Photogalvanographic Company with whom Talbot was in dispute regarding his patent for photographic engraving. See Doc. No: 07807. The other partner, Peter Wickens Fry, had been a prominent opponent of Talbot’s photographic patents.
3. To buy out the patent rights held by Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company and the other proprietors of the Patent Photogalvanographic Company. See also Doc. No: 07475 and Doc. No: 07923.
4. Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company had patented a process for photographic engraving that was broadly similar to that of Talbot [ Improvements in the Art of Engraving, Patent No. 565 of 29 October 1852] in that the first part used gelatine and potassium bichromate; Pretsch’s second part, however, used the electrotype process. Talbot claimed it infringed his patent, but neither side was willing to compromise. The Patent Photo-Galvanographic Company (commonly, The Photogalvanographic Company) was based on the work of Pretsch. 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.
5. See Doc. No: 07465.