31 Sackville St London <1>
Sept. 8. 1839
Dear Sir
I believe you have not seen any of my photographic attempts with the Solar Microscope. I therefore enclose 4 specimens of magnified lace. <2> I have great hopes of this branch of the Art proving very useful, as for instance in copying the forms of minute crystallization which are so complicated as almost to defy the pencil.
Have you tried M. Daguerre’s plan <3> yet, and with what success? I have not yet had leisure to make the attempt. The first part of his process, exposing silver to the vapour of iodine, has long been known to me, but the sensibility to light had not appeared to me sufficient. I described to Section A at Birmingham <4> the variable Newtonian rings which I obtained last year from this process.
I expect to be able to compete with M. Daguerre in drawing with the Solar Microscope, when a few obvious improvements have been adopted. By the way did he show you anything remarkable of this kind? <5>
Believe me Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. 31 Sackville Street, London residence of the Feildings, often used as a London base by WHFT.
2. The four examples of WHFT’s magnified lace known to have been owned by Herschel are three negatives, dated 1839 in WHFT’s hand; NMeM, Bradford, Schaaf 2250, 2274 and 2775, and one print of magnified lace, also dated 1839 in WHFT’s hand, Herschel collection at Oxford Museum for the History of Science, Schaaf 3767.
3. The daguerreotype.
4. WHFT, ‘Remarks on M. Daguerre’s Photogenic Process’, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report for 1839, v. 8, pt. 2, 1840, pp. 3–5.
5. One of the first photographs that Daguerre displayed publicly was of a dead spider seen in the solar microscope. This was cited in a 6 January letter from H. Gaucheraud that had originally appeared in La Gazette de France; WHFT likely became aware of this when the letter was reprinted in The Literary Gazette, no. 1147, 12 January 1839, p. 28. Years later, WHFT remembered that “the first person who applied photography to the solar microscope was undoubtedly Mr Wedgwood… but none of his delineations have been preserved, and I believe that no particulars are known. Next in order of time to Mr Wedgwood’s, came my own experiments. Having published my first photographic process in January, 1839, I immediately applied it to the solar microscope, and in the course of that year made a great many microscopic photographs, which I gave away to Sir John Herschell [sic], Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, and other friends. The size of these pictures was generally half that of a sheet of writing paper, or about eight inches square. The process employed was my original process, termed by me at first ‘Photogenic drawing,’ – for the calotype process was not yet invented. I succeeded in my attempts, chiefly in consequence of a careful arrangement of the solar microscope, by which I was enabled to obtain a very luminous image, and to maintain it steadily on the paper during five or ten minutes, the time requisite… the magnifying power obtained was… 289 in surface. The definition of the image was good. After the invention of the calotype process, it became of course a comparatively easy matter to obtain these images; and I then ceased to occupy myself with this branch of photography, in order to direct my whole attention to the improvement of the views taken with the camera.” WHFT, letter to Samuel Highley, jun., 10 May 1853, read at the Twentieth Ordinary Meeting of the Society of Arts, Journal of the Society of Arts, 13 May 1853, p. 292. This is Doc. No: 06774.