William Henry Fox Talbot to Faraday   29 March 18331

Wednesday

Dear Sir

Will you allow your assistant while I am absent in the country, to fuse a small quantity of glass for me in a crucible mixed with oxide of Chromium to colour it green. We tried it yesterday, and succeeded in making a yellowish green glass but we had not heat enough2.

Have you ever remarked how a capillary glass tube conducts away electricity, it blows through it like wind, I think this is the reason the little arrangement I made yesterday would not act well, nor do I think the arrangement you proposed would act well, if enclosed in a glass tube.

Yours truly | H.F. Talbot


Endorsement: To M Faraday | 1833

1
Dated on the basis that both the experiments discussed in this letter are noted in Talbot's J notebook (LA MS), entry for 28 March 1833.
2
See Talbot (1834a), 112-3 for the outcome of these experiments on chromium. Eventually he used sulphate of chromium in a hollow prism, rather than glass mixed with chromium.

Bibliography

TALBOT, William Henry Fox (1834a): “Facts relating to Optical Science. No. I”, Phil. Mag., 4: 112-4.

Please cite as “Faraday0650,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0650