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Document number: 8807
Date: 09 Mar 1864
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: SMYTH Charles Piazzi
Collection: Royal Photographic Society Coll, National Media Museum, Bradford
Last updated: 17th February 2012

ROYAL OBSERVATORY
EDINBURGH

March 9 1864

My dear Sir,

I am very glad to hear by yours of the 7th, of your being again in the neighbourhood, & in active development of your important inventions.

I shall be very glad to see the result of your Moon when prepared.

I have a few positive Moons on glass, the Moons about 3 inches square magnified I copied by myself from Mr Harkness’s negatives at Liverpool Observatory, – which I shall be happy to lend you for photoglyphing, if you are wanting more Moon originals, and if these should prove good enough.<1> But they are not very perfect, because the negatives had been varnished before they came here with a dusky varnish, & the collodion [missing text] reticulated. Still however they are Moons, siezed [sic] from the sky by photographic art, and if not as neat & clean as they should be, it might be an opportunity for you to shew if more colour might be producible in the engraving by using a larger and a longer shaped aquatint grain, than you would care to employ [illegible] when as usual seeking your most inimitable definition.

I hoped you recd a packet of our Obsy pamphlets with your important contributions, sent to Millburn Tower<2> in the summer. We have not yet got the mass of our volumes sent off, so that your fine photoglyphic plate there has not yet been presented to all the eyes, destined we hope to admire it.

& I remain dear Sir, Yours truly
C. Piazzi Smyth

[envelope:]

H. Fox Talbot Esqre
&c &c &c
8 Rutland Square

[on back flap:]

ROYAL OBSERVATORY
EDINBURGH


Notes:

1. One of the resulting photoglyphs is illustrated in Larry J. Schaaf, Sun Pictures Catalogue Twelve: Talbot and Photogravure (New York: Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Inc., 2003), p. 43.

2. Millburn Tower, Gogar, just west of Edinburgh; the Talbot family made it their northern home from June 1861 to November 1863. It is particularly important because WHFT conducted many of his photoglyphic engraving experiments there. The house had a rich history. Built for Sir Robert Liston (1742-1836), an 1805 design by Benjamin Latrobe for a round building was contemplated but in 1806 a small house was built to the design of William Atkinson (1773-1839), best known for Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford. The distinctive Gothic exterior was raised in 1815 and an additional extension built in 1821. Liston had been ambassador to the United States and maintained a warm Anglo-American relationship in the years 1796-1800. His wife, the botanist Henrietta Liston, née Marchant (1751-1828) designed a lavish American garden, sadly largely gone by the time the Talbots rented the house .

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