Responds to JB's 1832-8-25 with comments about the optical properties of tourmaline. JH also talks about his astronomical work, including the collimator on his telescope and his double star work.
Showing 1–6 of 6 items
The Sir John Herschel Collection
The preparation of the print Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir John Herschel (Michael J. Crowe ed., David R. Dyck and James J. Kevin assoc. eds, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, viii + 828 pp) which was funded by the National Science Foundation, took ten years. It was accomplished by a team of seventeen professors, visiting scholars, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and staff working at the University of Notre Dame.
The first online version of Calendar was created in 2009 by Dr Marvin Bolt and Steven Lucy, working at the Webster Institute of the Adler Planetarium, and it is that data that has now been reformatted for incorporation into Ɛpsilon.
Further information about Herschel, his correspondence, and the editorial method is available online here: http://historydb.adlerplanetarium.org/herschel/?p=intro
No texts of Herschel’s letters are currently available through Ɛpsilon.
Responds to JB's 1832-8-25 with comments about the optical properties of tourmaline. JH also talks about his astronomical work, including the collimator on his telescope and his double star work.
Not willing to be involved in translation of French work on astronomy [see JB's 1867-2].
Notes ingenuity of JB's gravimetric balance. Astonished that it did not occur to anyone before. [Letter continues 5 Feb.:] Suggestion for improving torsion thread arrangement.
JB's solution to torsion thread arrangement is simpler and more ingenious than JH's. Enquires about details of gravimetric balance. Pendulum measurements. Density of continents. Clarification of JH's privileges as foreign associate of Institute. Death of J. B. Biot.
Suggestions on improving JB's gravimetric balance, constructed on principle of 'Bifilar suspension.' Refers to 1861 report of similar invention by J. A. Brown and another article on this topic.
No mention of Emmanuel Liais's L'espace céleste in English journals. Contact London publishers to find translator for it. Alexander Herschel is now professor of natural philosophy at Andersonian Institution in Glasgow. Hopes JB's elegant method of measuring gravity by torsion will not die before being put into practice.