of the Royal Society in 1838, and in 1839 was one of the original members of the Microscopical Society. In April 1839 Reade discovered a mode of separating heat-rays from those of light by the use of a hemispherical lens, so as to enable pictures to be taken with safety by means of cemented achromatic objectives. At the same time he discovered the value of an infusion of galls as a sensitiser of paper treated with silver nitrate, and that of hyposulphite of soda for fixing the photographic image. He thus succeeded in taking the first microphotographs with the solar microscope, and exhibited some of his ‘solar mezzotints’ so obtained at the London Institution, at Leeds, and elsewhere. His methods were described in public lectures, during April and May 1839, by Edward William Brayley [q. v.]; but these lectures were not published, and consequently, though Reade's discoveries antedated those of William Henry Fox Talbot [q. v.], the latter was allowed in 1854 to renew the patent taken out by him in 1841. Reade's claims as a discoverer are recognised by Sir David Brewster in the ‘North British Review’ (August 1847) and by Captain Abney (Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed. xviii. 824), as well as by the jurors of the Paris exhibition of 1856, by whom he was honourably mentioned for some photographs of the moon. His chief other inventions were the hemispherical condenser for the microscope, commonly known as ‘Reade's kettledrum’ (1861), which he afterwards modified by the addition of two lenses, and the equilateral prism for microscopic illumination (1869). In addition to the twenty-five papers under Reade's name in the ‘Royal Society's Catalogue’ (v. 114 and viii. 710) is one on Roman coin-moulds from the ‘Numismatic Chronicle’ (1839); and among those enumerated are several on the microscopic structure of chalk and flint, on luminous meteors, and on the evolution of ammonia by animals, contributed to the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ the ‘Transactions of the Microscopical Society,’ and the ‘British Association Reports,’ besides one on his observatory at Stone in the ‘Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society;’ and one on the use of gutta-percha as a substitute for glass in photography, in the ‘Journal of the Photographic Society.’ Reade became a member of this society in 1855, and was president of the Royal Microscopical Society at the time of his death, which took place at Bishopsbourne on 12 Dec. 1870. Reade married Charlotte Dorothea Farish, sister of Professor Farish of Cambridge, by whom he had three children, who all died young.
[Monthly Microscopical Journal, 1871, v. 92; information furnished by W. Paley Baildon, esq., his great-nephew.]
READE, ROBERT (d. 1415), bishop of Chichester, was a Dominican friar and master of arts who, on 9 Sept. 1394, was papally provided to the bishopric of Waterford and Lismore. He was translated by the pope to Carlisle, and received the temporalities of that see in March 1396. On 5 Oct. of the same year he was again translated by a papal bull to Chichester, and received the temporalities on 6 May 1397. Reade was a trier of petitions in the parliament of September 1397, and swore to observe the statutes then made (Rolls of Parliament, iii. 348, 355). He was one of the counsellors whom Edmund of Langley, duke of York, consulted as to opposing Henry of Lancaster in August 1399. In the first parliament of Henry IV he assented to the imprisonment of Richard II (ib. iii. 427). In 1404 he was again a trier of petitions, and in 1406 was a witness to the entail of the crown (ib. iii. 546, 582). During the reign of Henry IV Reade is occasionally mentioned as attending the council (Nicolas, Proc. Privy Council, i. 156, ii. 6, 98). He died in June 1415. His will, dated 10 Aug. 1414, was proved on 6 July 1415. His register, which begins on 10 Feb. 1396–7 and ends 14 April 1414, is the oldest of the ‘Chichester Episcopal Registers’ now preserved. Some notes from it are given in the ‘Sussex Archæological Collections’ (xvii. 197–9). The author of the ‘Annales Ricardi Secundi’ (p. 243), in recording Reade's action in August 1399, says he was ‘irreprehensibilis et sine querela,’ meaning that he had not been implicated in the political intrigues of 1397. There does not seem to be any evidence as to whether he was related to his predecessor, William Rede or Reade [q. v.]
[Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Angl. i. 244, ii. 236; Cotton's Fasti Eccl. Hib. i. 5; Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 508, ed. Richardson; Sussex Archæological Collections, xvii. 197–9; other authorities quoted.]
READE, WILLIAM WINWOOD (1838–1875), traveller, novelist, and controversialist, eldest son of William Barrington Reade of Ipsden House, Oxfordshire, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Captain John Murray, R.N., was born on 26 Dec. 1838. Charles Reade [q. v.] was his uncle. He was educated at Hyde House, Winchester, and matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 13 March 1856, but he left the university without a degree. He early showed a taste for the investigation of natural science, but this
