44 Queen Ann St <1>
Monday Feb. 11 1839
Dear Sir
The re-transfer process <2> is thus mentioned by me in my paper read to the R.S. which is reprinted in Saturday’s Athenæum, <3> a copy of which I will have the pleasure of sending you– §11. “In copying engravings”, &c… “But if the picture so obtained, is first preserved so as to bear sunshine, it may afterwards be itself employed as an object to be copied, & by means of this second process the lights & shadows are brought back to their original disposition. ”
The discovery you have made of a glass which increases the effect of sunshine, is very remarkable; <4> I hope it will be confirmed by your subsequent experiments.
Although Daguerre <5> is said to succeed admirably with the Camera, it does not follow that he can copy an engraving, a flower, or anything else that requires close contact. I say this, on the supposition that he uses a metal plate covered with a liquid from which light precipitates something previously held in solution. If so, it is evident that the engraving would prevent all effect.
This was my idea when I suggested that it might be best not to disclose at present the washing out process the retransfer, &c. until brought to a state more worthy of publication, inasmuch as the Parisians would hardly be able to discover it immediately if it is no part of Daguerre’s process, & I wished to show them that we could do something here which they could not imitate as yet. Do you think me right in this respect? There is not the smallest doubt that the finest engravings can be imitated & I wished that we might have the honour of first exhibiting them. I can work with very thick engravings on a summer’s day.
I am much obliged to you for proposing to the Council to print my paper in full in the Proceedings, which sufficiently establishes the date of that communication. I never expressed any intention of withdrawing the paper. I wrote to Dr Roget <6> quite the contrary.
The little view you sent me is pleasing– It looks something like Eastnor Castle. <7>
The newspapers say that dilute nitric acid will “wash out” a drawing. I have made trial of it accordingly, but as far as one experiment goes, without success–
Believe me Dear Sir Yours most truly
H. F. Talbot
I am so confident about the success of copying engravings judging by those which I have already made, that I should like very much to prepare a fine collection of them, to be shown at the Scientific Meeting at Birmingham <8> or sooner. I wish to know if you do not think that the publication of the washing out, fixing, &c. &c would prevent this, by putting it in the power of anyone, either at home or abroad, to exhibit such a collection before we may be ready to do so!
Sir J. Herschel Bart
Slough
Notes:
1. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.
2. That is, the process of making a positive.
3. WHFT, ‘Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil’, Athenaeum, n.589, 9 February 1839, pp.114–117. This paper was read before the Royal Society 31 January 1839.
4. Herschel made this discovery the topic of his first paper on photography, read See Larry J. Schaaf, ‘Sir John Herschel’s 1839 Royal Society Paper on Photography’, History of Photography, v. 3 no. 1, January 1979. pp. 47–60, for the transcribed paper, John Frederick William Herschel, ‘Note on the Art of Photography or the Application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the Purposes of Pictorial Representation’, read before the Royal Society 12 March, 1839, not submitted for publication.
5. Although Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist, showman & inventor, had announced his invention of the daguerreotype - very few details emerged until his pension was granted by the French government.
6. Dr Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), scientific writer. Probably he means in Doc. No: 03784.
7. This print not located. The castle is in Ledbury, Herefordshire.
8. WHFT took full advantage of the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in Birmingham in August 1839. He exhibited 93 specimens of negatives and positives. They were listed in a pamphlet, A Brief Description of the Photogenic Drawings Exhibited at the Meeting of the British Association, at Birmingham, in August, 1839, by H. F. Talbot, Esq..