Author: HUNT, Robert.
Title: Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations; embracing a consideration of all the photographic processes.
Description: London, Longman &c, 1854. Octavo publisher's blindstamped cloth (a touch faded); xx,396pp, folding frontispiece with some hand colouring, some diagrams through the text. Title a little browned by a note (see below); a very good copy. ¶ Second edition, largely rewritten to encompass the progress made in photography since the original edition, ten years earlier - and to claim his proper place as an original experimenter. Hunt's preface includes a defence against the label of 'compilation' visited on the first edition - his experiments began before the publication of the processes of Daguerre or Fox Talbot and have continued "at no small cost, and with a large expenditure of thought". The loosely inserted note alluded to is to William Benson from a Furnivall (probably not Frederick James) offering him the long term loan of this book - though it probably wouldn't be needed for his forthcoming 'excellent' book on colour. This is probably Benson's Principles of the Science of Colour; 1868.

Keywords: science light photography chemistry c19th technology colour