My dear Sir

The slides ^<1> will I dare say be here tomorrow morning, as they have left Town – & then we will see what a fair experiment on your process ^<2> makes of it.

I can shew you pictures on Mica which I have used instead of glass for Collodion – Paper has been proposed instead of the glass in some of the numbers of the Photographic Society’s ^<3> Journal. If you wish me to make any other exact experiments besides the one with the positive process, let me know. My assistant ^<4> is to try your ordinary (original Calotype process. If he fails I shall try it myself, if he succeeds you can have no more triumphant proof of its success & correctness.

I shall be in Town on Saturday next or perhaps on Friday afternoon & shall take the earliest opportunity of calling on your Solicitor ^<5>.

Believe me, always Yours very truly
Nevil Story-Maskelyne

Ashmolean Museum ^<6>
Oxford.
Dec^r 3. 1854.

[at top of p. 1 above salutation:] I will bring your collodion-paper negative ^<7> with me unless you want it earlier.

---

Notes:

1. See Doc. No: 07072 and Doc. No: 07076.

2. Talbot claimed the collodion process as an extension of his patent calotype process, rather than a new invention. He hoped to prove this in court by showing that the pyrogallic acid used in the collodion process had the same effect as the gallic acid used in the calotype process [see Doc. No: 07067].

3. This had begun in 1847 as the Photographic Club. It subsequently became the Royal Photographic Society.

4. Carl [Karl] Ewald, Ph.D. See Doc. No: 07089 and Doc. No: 07072.

5. John Henry Bolton (1795–1873), solicitor, London.

6. Story-Maskelyne lectured on mineralogy and chemistry at the University of Oxford, and had a laboratory in the lower part of the museum building.

7. See Doc. No: 07074 for the half-collodion-coated/half-iodised paper demonstration-sheets.