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Document number: 7046
Date: 30 Sep 1854
Recipient: BRUNNER William
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA54-052
Last updated: 6th February 2010

[all in WHFT's hand, save for Brunner's signature]

Keswick
September 30. 1854

I, William Henry Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey in the county of Wilts Esquire give permission and license to William Brunner of Presburg in Hungary, to take photographic portraits for sale to the Public by the process of making Positive Pictures on Glass, patented by me <1> in in [sic] the year 1851, during the whole of the year 1854, without pecuniary payment in consideration of his being a refugee from his country, owing to political troubles.

And I, William Brunner accept the same permission and license with thanks.

W. H. F. Talbot

William Brunner

Notes:

1. Patent no. 13664 on ‘photography’ taken out on 12 June 1851. WHFT patented a method of making albumen on glass plate negatives in 1849; it also covered a chemical method of reversing the negative image on an albumen glass plate into a positive image. See H.J.P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of photography and man of science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), p. 183.