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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.
Has been ill for two months. Will be visited by Dr. Andrew Smith shortly. Hopes TF can come to Collingwood to meet Smith.
Discusses how exceptional observations of meteorological and magnetical phenomena should be recorded and what significance should be attached to them. Cannot attend next meeting of committee.
Thanks GA for exercising GA's usual discretion in the matter of the funding of Charles Babbage's calculating machine [see GA's 1842-9-26].
Proposes to come to London to visit him. Has just received the proofs of Robert Maine's paper on parallax.
Has received from William Lassell some of the new observations he carried out with his new 9" speculum. Comments on these and various clusters of stars changing their position.
Sends a memoir he has scribbled off for next Wednesday's meeting. Would like JH's advice on several points.
Remarks that he is 50 years old, and that he and CH have 'seen something of that odd and most changeable compound called Human Nature.'
Will be pleased to come to Collingwood at any time and hopes the Herschels will also visit them. Her son was right about the word quinque. Comments on the various ways different people observe the colors of stars. Will be pleased to see the poetic scraps.
Regarding JH's receipt of the 'Standard' reports. Remarks on the electrometer and barometer in the recent storm.
Many thanks for JH's explanations, which gave satisfaction to the geologists. Gives two queries of his own for which he would like clarification. Can they print JH's Alpine phenomena memoir?
Sending a description of the observatory he has erected, containing an equatorially mounted Newtonian reflector. Has high opinion of its efficiency. Has detected a sixth star near the trapezium of Orionis.
Arranging a visit for GA to Collingwood.
Sends works on meteorology and instructions for natural periodic phenomena. More proselytes in horary observations. Asks for JH's recommendations for those observing meteors in the other hemisphere.
Regarding his letter writing. Has a promise of a trip on the Dover Railway.
Believes that the operative rays in JH's thermographic process are neither 'calorific' nor 'thermal'.
Encloses newspaper clipping that reports JH is member of commission of inquiry on weights and measures. Protests that the poor are defrauded more by false scales than by nonstandard weights. Proposes remedy.
Regarding the publication of his own observations on Halley's Comet; comments on these. [L. F.] Wartmann was very pleased with the results of his recent visit to England. Has been occupied with political problems. Looks forward to seeing the completion of JH's Cape observations.
Final arrangements for GA's visit to JH [see GA's 1842-3-15].
Responds to RM's request for an analysis of the cause of the difference in climate between Orenburg and Catherineburg in Russia. Agrees that Geological Society can print JH's Alpine memoir.
Comments on WL's finding a sixth star in the trapezium of Orion [see WL's 1842-3-10]; lists other catalogues that identify that star.