Add MS 88942/1/301

A notebook containing copy texts relating to Talbot's Letters Patent for the calotype process: 'Improvements in obtaining Pictures or representations of objects' (8 February 1841). Talbot's Patent had included the proviso that 'the said Mr Henry Fox Talbot shall cause a particular description of the nature of [his] said invention and in what manner the same is to be performed [...] within 6 calendar months'. This notebook, written in more than a single hand, contains copy texts of four subsequent and related legal documents, with the following original dates:

• 29 July 1841;
• 28 November 1843;
• 18 June 1850 (with Thomas Augustine Malone of Regent Street)
• 11 December 1851.

The documents describe Talbot's evolving photographic process. There is a distinct difference between the hand that copied the first two documents and the hand of the two later texts, sugggesting that the notebook was filled accumatively during the ten year period.