Lacock
28 Feb. 1840
My Dear Sir
I have written to Town for a copy of the specification of Daguerre's patent, <1> as enrolled, but have received no answer as yet, have you seen it? and do you know whether he attempts to patent anything beyond his own invention? I thank you for your offer of sending me the sheets of your memoir <2> as they are revised, and shall be glad to receive them, chiefly to enable myself to repeat as soon as possible some of your interesting experiments.
Mr Granville Penn's etymology of free Masonry<3> is very ingenious, but several objections occur before it can be admitted: ex. gr. What historical evidence is there of the existence of this society in Egypt? which land, according to this theory, must have been its headquarters, indeed its birthplace.
Is the society ever called in Greek authors φιλαδελφίᾳ ?<4>Is not the name sufficiently accounted for by the circumstance that no doubt there were great secrets known to the architects of the middle ages, which their great experience, obtained in rearing those stupendous cathedrals, made them acquainted with &c &c.
I have read somewhere, another ingenious but not satisfactory attempt by the same author (I think) to reconcile an apparent discrepancy between the evangelists concerning the fate of Judas - which he effects by giving to the word ἐλάκησε not the meaning which it has in Greek, but what he contends should be its import in Latin.
This morning in very cloudy weather I found that my sensitive paper, well dried at the fire, was pretty strongly affected by the radiation of the clouds in three seconds. Do not you think this is equal to the sensibility of Daguerre's iodized plates?
I enclose Patroclus & Venus, done yesterday in fine weather.<5>
Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. On August 14, 1839 patent agent Miles Berry obtained a Writ of the Privy Seal for a New or Improved Method of Obtaining the Spontaneous Reproduction of All the Images Received in the Focus of the Camera Obscura, specification to be enrolled six months later. Berry was acting on behalf of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), French artist, showman & inventor who wished to patent the daguerreotype in England.
2. John Frederick William Herschel, "On the Chemical Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Preparations of Silver and Other Substances, Both Metallic and Non-metallic, and on Some Photographic Processes, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1840, pp. 1-59.
3. Granville Penn (1761-1844), author; he was the grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania.
4. From the Greek philadelphos, ie, brotherly love.
5. The dated negative of Patroclus is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, 1995.206.98 and there is a print from it in the collection of the French Academie des Beaux Arts, 5.e.29 (1840) f3, Schaaf 2350. Although the image of Venus has not been traced, there is a totally faded negative in the Smithsonian dated 27 February 1840, inscribed in pencil in an identical manner to the Patroclus; 1995.206.237, Schaaf 2352.