Mr Maskelyne
Athm <1>
Wedny Evg
Dr Sir
I understand the trial is put off till Wedny next <2> perhaps Thursday, for the Convenience of the Court – therefore I should think there would be no necessity for Your coming to Town till it is convenient to you <3> to do so – I am glad to hear Your assistant has nearly succeeded <4> in getting a good Camera picture without any assistance beyond the Specification –
We tried to day a very simple experiment, <5> intended to show that there is no essential difference between the Collodion process and the Calotype – We took a sheet of ordinary paper and poured iodised collodion on it which flowed very easily over the surface. Before it was quite dry, we immersed it for 2 minutes in a bath of Nitrate Silver, took it out and poured gallic acid over it, then placed it in the Camera, formed an invisible image (very rapidly) developed the image with gallonitrate and fixed it with bromide.
This you see is the Calotype process transferred to collodion – I have always maintained that a sheet of glass, or a sheet of paper, coated with iodised collodion was nothing more than a substitute for my iodised paper. But this furnishes the proof of it, because either of them when treated by the Calotype process, gives a very good result, & nearly similar. [illegible deletion] Can any one maintain that one of these pictures is a Calotype, but that the other belongs to another order of things?
Yours truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. The Athenæum and (London) Literary Chronicle, London.
2. Talbot’s patent trial eventually took place from Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 December 1854. In 1852 he had thrown open his photographic patents as far as amateur photography was concerned, though he retained them regarding professional portraiture. He won several injunctions against professional portrait-photographers who infringed them, and in 1854 he sought to obtain another against James Henderson, photographer, London, a professional photographer who took portraits using the collodion process. However, in the trial in December 1854, before the Henderson case was concluded, he failed to obtain an injunction against another portrait-photographer, Martin Laroche, who, he claimed, had infringed two important elements of his patents. [For an account of these significant cases, and the opposition to Talbot’s patents, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 198–209.] Story-Maskelyne was one of the witnesses for Talbot, who sought to prove that the collodion process was an extension of his Calotype process, not a new invention.
3. Story-Maskelyne was extremely busy at the time. See Doc. No: 07081.
4. See Doc. No: 07081.
5. See the experiment described in Doc. No: 07076. See also Doc. No: 07077.