TALBOT6439

My dear Henry

Thanks for your remarks ¹ on Foucaults Pendulum experiment. I have no doubt that if you could suspend a rigid bar as you suggest, it would, remaining unmoved, while the earth revolved, appear to move round, but the experiment is not worth making, it being obviously impossible to satisfy the conditions of the experiment, which would necessarily imply an absence of all friction between the bar and its fulcrum. The practical difficulty to be overcome in the Pendulum experiment is similar in its nature, there being always more or less friction at the point of suspension of the rod.

Yours ever truly
CRM Talbot

3 Cavendish Sq
July 8 1851.

[envelope:]
W. H. F. Talbot Esq^e
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Orrell Cottage Grasmere
Ambleside
Westmorland