David Brewster to Faraday   4 November 1833

My dear Sir,

Having been requested by Mr Napier1 to draw up a Popular Treatise on Electricity for the Encycl Britannica2 I have been anxious to obtain an account of the latest researches on the subject of ordinary Electricity. I have already given an abstract of your recent and valuable discoveries in so far as they are printed in the Phil. Transactions & in the Lond. & Edin. Phil. Magazine; but it seems to me that you may possibly have some other researches ready for publication, the general results of which you might not be disinclined to send me for inclusion in the Article referred to.

If you could refer me to any recent inquiries which I am not likely to have seen you would add to the obligation. Do you know anything of M. Peltiers3 discoveries communicated to the Institute on the 27th May 1833 respecting the transformation of Quantity of Electricity into Intensity & vice versa from the same producing cause; and of the neutralisation of two similar currents, from the same cause, by making them interfere in opposite directions? I have only seen a notice of the fact in the Journal called L’Institut 4.

Lady Brewster5 desires her best compts to you and I am, My dear Sir,

Ever Most Faithfully Yours | D. Brewster

Belleville by Kingussie | Novr 4th 1833.

P.S. Capt Elliot6 of the Admiralty thro’ whom I send this will forward any thing you may desire be sent me. I should like much to have a separate Copy of your last7 to bind up with the 1st part of it8 which you sent me formerly. | DB


Address: To | Dr. Faraday | Royal Institution | Albemarle Street | London

1
Macvey Napier (1776–1847, ODNB). Editor of the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
2
Brewster (1842).
3
Jean Charles Athanase Peltier (1785–1845, DSB). French physicist.
4
L’Institut, 1833, 1: 17-18.
5
Juliet Brewster, née Macpherson (c.1776–1850, ODNB under D. Brewster). Married Brewster in 1810.
6
George Elliot (1784–1863, ODNB). Naval officer and political secretary to the Admiralty, 1830–1834.
7
Faraday (1833a), ERE3.
8
Faraday (1832a, b), ERE1 and 2.

Bibliography

BREWSTER, David (1842): "Electricity", Encylopedia Britanica, 7th edition, 8: 565-663.

FARADAY, Michael (1833a): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Third Series. Identity of Electricities derived from different sources. Relation by measure of common and voltaic Electricity”, Phil. Trans., 123: 23-54.

Please cite as “Faraday0686a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0686a