Twickenham House. S.W.
Aug. x. 1862
Dear Mr Talbot/
I have wished much to have had the pleasure of meeting you again at the Exhibition but I have not been so fortunate as to do so.
I hope you are satisfied with the wording of the award, but I am now writing a short report of the Jury on photography & shall be happy to combine any notes you will kindly favour me with on your processes for that purpose. <1> – I do not wish to state what is incorrect and I gather from reading that Mungo Ponton first used the Bichromate of Potash & gelatine <2> – I have also an obscure remembrance that you in conversation with me told me that used [sic] it as a portion of your new patent – It appears also to form the Base of operations for Col. Sir Hy James, <3> Mr Osborne <4> & others – If it is not to Mungo Ponton that the discovery is due – I should be glad to allude otherwise if it is your own. I hope you will pardon me for not being more at home on this subject & will favour me with an answer as early as you can, for the reports must be delivered as speedily as possible.
I am dear Mr Talbot Yours very respectfully & obliged
Hugh W Diamond
Notes:
1. This was for WHFT’s Prize Medal won in the International Exhibition of 1862 for ‘photographic engravings on copper & steel, produced by the action of light alone’. For an illustration of the commemorative medal see the frontis to Larry J Schaaf, Sun Pictures Catalogue Twelve: Talbot and Photogravure (New York: Hans P Kraus, Jr, 2003).
2. This is not quite correct. Ponton, an eccentric Scot, was the first to employ potassium bichromate (or dichromate, in modern usage) to make a photographic image, but did so unaware of the powerful role that organic compounds such as gelatin played in this. He simply coated plain writing paper (that happened to contain gelatin as a sizing) with the bichromate, creating a weak image, but not one where any further physical action could be taken. WHFT employed the property of bichromates of hardening gelatin under the action of light in order to make a resist for making photogravure plates. Ponton's publication was ‘Notice of a Cheap and Simple Method of Preparing Paper for Photographic Drawing, in Which the Use of Any Salt of Silver is Dispensed With’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, v. 1, pp.336–338.
3. As the Superintendant of the Ordnance Survey, Sir Henry James took an avid interest in the invention and development of photomechanical processes, especially in the lithographic process of photozincography. See Luis Nadeau, Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes, v. 2, M–Z (New Brunswick, Canada: Atalier Luis Nadeau, 1990), p.385.
4. John Walter Osborne, an Australian experimenter on photomechanical methods. See Helena E Wright, ‘The Osborne Collection: Photomechanical Incunabula’, History of Photography, v. 24, no. 1, Spring 2000, pp.42–46.
5. Someone, perhaps WHFT himself, outlined the watermark on this paper in pencil: ‘1843’. It is almost certainly a sheet of Whatman’s Turkey Mill paper, a favourite of WHFT and others for making both negatives and prints during the 1840s.