The Forty-Foot Telescope at Slough. Photographed by Sir John F.W. Herschel [photographed 9 September 1839;...
Circular silver photographic print, 92 mm. in diameter, mounted on paper incorporating a printed title and descriptive letterpress dated August 1890 with the signatures of two of Herschel’s sons, mounted on card. Some small areas of abrasions to the paper surface. In the original frame, by Ryman & Co. of Oxford, made from the rungs of the ladder to the telescope. With a fragment of an original (?) printed descriptive notice on the back.
This is the earliest photograph of a scientific instrument and the first photograph deliberately taken to record an object prior to its disappearance (the earliest “record”... More