34 



NOTES Al^D QUERIES. 



[No. 245. 



done in the American edition of Mr. De Quincey's 

 works, I have shown (" N. & Q.," Vol. viii., p. 26.), 

 and perhaps the above will be thought to the same 

 effect. A much graver charge of misrepresent- 

 ation, uncorrected in the English edition, may be 

 seen in Mr. Henderson's Sketch of Kanfs Life 

 and Works (p. Ixxv.), prefixed to the translation 

 of Victor Cousin's Philosophy of Kant. H. B. C. 

 U. U. Club. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC COKBESPONDENCB. 



[The following documents will, we believe, be perused 

 with great interest at the present moment, and be here- 

 after regarded as valuable materials towards the History 

 of Photography.] 



Eev. J. B. Eeade, on Mr. H. Fox Talbot's Claim to the 

 Priority of Discovery of the Use of Gallic Acid in Pho- 

 tography. 



Stone Vicarage, Aylesbury, June 24, 1854. 



Dear Sir, — On my return home after some days' ab- 

 sence, I find my attention called to an extract from your 

 affidavit referring to my use of infusion of galls as a pho- 

 togenic agent. I feel it due to j'ou to state without 

 delay, that there is abundant proof of my use of infusion 

 of galls for the purposes mentioned in your specification, 

 and of my publication of it as forming " a very sensitive 

 argentine preparation " two years before your patent was 

 sealed. Ever since the publication of an extract from 

 my letter to Mr. Brayley in the North British Review for 

 August 1847, which, from the tenor of your affidavit, I 

 conclude that you never saw, my claim has been fully re- 

 cognised in several of the popular manuals. The follow- 

 ing is a quotation from one published by "VYillats: — 

 " The Calotype or Talbotype is, as we have already men- 

 tioned, the invention of Mr. Fox Talbot, or is claimed by 

 him." To this the editor adds the following note : — "So 

 early as April 1839 the Rev. J. B. Reade made a sensitive 

 paper by using infusion of galls after nitrate of silver : by 

 this process Mr. Reade obtained several drawings of mi- 

 croscopic objects by means of the solar microscope ; the 

 drawings were taken before the paper was dry. In a com- 

 munication to Mr. Brayley, Mr. Reade proposed the use 

 of gallate or tannate of silver ; and Mr. Brayley, in his 

 public lectures in April and May, explained the process 

 and exhibited the chemical combinations which Mr. 

 Eeade pi-oposed to use." 



You may perhaps have forgotten that, at the Meeting 

 of the British Association at Oxford, I had a short con- 

 versation with you on your own coloured photographs. 

 I introduced myself to you as a relative of your friend 

 and neighbour. Sir John Awdry, and I informed you that 

 I had used infusion of galls for microscopic photographs 

 and fixed with hyposulphite of soda, before you took out 

 your patent. 



The effect of gallic acid or the infusion of galls in de- 

 veloping an invisible image was discovered accidentally by 

 me, as I believe it Avas also by yourself, and it is certain 

 that no one could use this photogenic agent as we have 

 done without discovering one of its chief properties. I 

 may state that I have often been asked to oppose your 

 patent ; but I had no wish to meddle with law, or to 

 interfere with the high reputation which your discovery 

 of a process, named after yourself, secured to you, by 

 which "paper could be made so sensitive that it Avas 

 darkened in five or six seconds when held close to a wax 

 candle, and gave impressions of leaves by the light of the 

 moon." This however was both subsequent to my own 

 use of gallate of silver, of which you appear never to 



have heard, and also essentially dependent upon it. My 

 nitro-gallate paper, which I used successfully with the 

 solar microscope, the camera, and an Argand lamp, was 

 far more sensitive than any which preceded it; and I 

 considered the important question of fixation to be set at 

 rest by the use of hyposulphite of soda, which I have no 

 doubt you employ yourself in preference to your own 

 fixer, the bromide of potassium. In fact, by my process, 

 which, as I state in my letter to Mr. Brayley, was the 

 result of numberless experiments, the important problem 

 was solved, inasmuch as good pictures could be rapidly 

 taken and permanently fixed. My principal instrument 

 was the solar microscope ; and while you failed, as you 

 state in your first paper at the Royal "Society, to obtain 

 even an impression after an hour's exposure, and were 

 disposed to give up this experiment in despair, though 

 you afterwards obtained small pictures in about a quarter 

 of an hour, I had succeeded in producing and developing 

 at one operation of less, and sometimes much less than 

 five minutes' duration, the beautiful Solar Mezzotints, as 

 I termed them, varying in size from 50 to 150 diameters, 

 which were exhibited "in 1839 at the Marquis of North- 

 ampton's, and at the London and Walthamstow Institu- 

 tions; and some in the spring of that year were even 

 sold at a Bazaar in Leeds in support of a charitable fund. 

 The process was explained to my friends in Yorkshire, 

 and I find from a Leeds manuscript that I proposed the 

 nitro-gallate paper " for immediate use and diffused day- 

 light." The ammonio-nitrate process also, which does 

 not seem to have any definite parentage, though I 

 believe included in your second patent of June 1843, 

 was among the first which I employed, and probably 

 I was the first to suggest it. At all events I may 

 give you as a matter of history the following extract 

 from a letter to my brother in Leeds, dated April 26, 

 1839: — "Dissolve G grains of nitrate in 3j of water 

 and add liquor ammonia, which will throw down 

 the brown oxide of silv^er, but on the addition of a little 

 more will take it up and form a clear solution. Wash the 

 paper and dry it. Then put 9j of common salt in half a 

 pint of distilled water. Wash the paper with this mix- 

 ture, &c." I also propose to dissolve two grains of gela- 

 tine in one ounce of distilled water as an accelerator for 

 the nitrate, as well as to fix with hyposulphite of soda. 

 Had Mr. Brayley's lectures been printed, jqvl would pro- 

 bably have become acquainted with my processes, as well 

 as with those of other photographers, which were ex- 

 plained and illustrated by him. At all events I have 

 never ceased most emphatically to make the claims which 

 in your affidavit j^ou deny to me, and therefore, for the 

 sake of furnishing a correct history of the progress of the 

 art, I must be allowed to print this letter, as the only 

 means left to me of meeting the case. 



I am sure that the art now so far advanced, and still 

 advancing, has our best wishes. Mr. Grove would present 

 to you in my name a copy of my letter to Mr. Hunt, 

 which was written before I had heard a syllable of your 

 present actions. 



Believe me to be. 

 Dear Sir, 



Yours faithfully, 



J. B. Eeade. 



Henry Fox Talbot, Esq. 



Affidavits made by Sir D. Brewster and Sir J.' Her- 

 SCHEL respecting the Calotype Photographic Process in- 

 vented by H. F. Talbot, Esq. 

 In Chancery. — Between William Henry Fox 

 Talbot, Plaintiff, and James Henderson, De- 

 fendant. 

 I, David Brewster, Principal of the United Colleges 

 of Saint Salvador and Saint Leonards, in the University 



