[draft:]

Bolt 25 Oct/57

If M^r Loxley deems my offer too small, you may add to it y^e foll^g – viz.To pay a furth^r reasonable sum at the end of the 7^th year of the pat^t if the latter prove be valuable – pat^t prove of suff^t value to [?] induce me to pay the fee of £100 then due to Gov^nt in order to mntⁿ it in exist^ce after y^t time –

This arrang^t w^d not, I th^k lead to any doubt or difficulty besides being a fair one –

You say the fee is due at the end of the 7^th year – is it not does not the Act say the 8^th year?

[expanded version:]

Bolton
25 October 1857

If M^r Loxley ^<1> deems my offer ^<2> too small, you may add to it the following – viz.To pay a further reasonable sum at the end of the 7^th year of the patent if the latter prove be valuable – patent prove of sufficient value to induce me to pay the fee of £100 then due to Government in order to maintain it in existence after that time –

This arrangement would not, I think lead to any doubt or difficulty besides being a fair one –

You say the fee is due at the end of the 7^th year – is it not does not the Act say the 8^th year?

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Notes:

1. Of Fry and Loxley, solicitors for the Patent Photogalvanographic Company in its patent dispute with Talbot regarding photographic engraving processes. The other partner, Peter Wickens Fry, had been a prominent opponent of Talbot’s photographic patents.

2. Talbot was prepared to buy out the patent taken out by Paul Pretsch (1808–1873), Austrian photographer & inventor; founder of the Photogalvanographic Company: see Doc. No: 07459. 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.