44 Queen Ann St <1>
March 1. 1839
Dear Sir
I am writing to Biot by today’s post, <2> & will mention your methods of preserving. As my letter goes by the common post, it cannot of course contain any enclosure. If you like I will send him next week your specimens marked 6.7.8.9; <3> but I should think it unadvisable to send 8 and 9 until they are fixed – shall I return them to your for that purpose?
My method of fixing with salt, answers best when the dark parts of the picture are very dark, & uniformly so, as when I take the outline of a plant, a fern leaf, &c. &c. In that case the ground does not sensibly suffer. It is apt to injure the finer shades. There is a proportion which when hit off gives beautiful results, as one immersion of the picture fixes it, & quite white. But upon what chemical reasons does the process depend, or why should it be at all possible, to obtain fixation in this manner? Nothing that is said in chemical works concerning Chloride of Silver has any bearing on the subject, nor do they even mention its insensible state.
I have tried Daguerre’s receipt, with muriatic ether. <4> It does not succeed well with me; I should be glad to know if you have tried it.
Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. 44 Queen Ann Street: London home of the Mundy family and a frequent base for WHFT.
2. For this letter to Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862), French scientist, see Doc. No: 03827.
3. See Doc. No: 03823.
4. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist, showman & inventor, claimed to have invented a process for sensitive paper as well as the daguerreotype, however it does not appear to have been a working process. In Doc. No: 03817, it is described as employing ‘hydrochloric or chlorohydric ether’.