Dionysius Lardner¹ to Faraday   27 November 1833

8 St James Square | 27 Nov: 1833.

My Dear Sir

Since my last letter to you I have given a good deal more consideration to the subject of Babbages machine and have gone over its details still more minutely with himself. The result is a conviction that it will be utterly impossible to do either the machine or myself justice in one or even in two lectures. I am well experience in popular assemblies and I know that I could do nothing clear satisfactory or effectual within the limits of an hour. I beg however that you may not suppose me desirous to back out of my proposal. I am only solicitous lest I should compromise my own powers as a lecturer and risk the loss of a fair opportunity of making known the details of this curious & beautiful piece of mechanism.

Would the following suggestion be likely to be acceptable to your committee? A course of three lectures devoted to the development of the calculating machinery, its principle, its mechanism both for computing & printing, the objects to which it will be applied, an account of the labors & difficulties encountered by the inventor &c &c.

I feel a strong confidence that I shall be able to make this short course, a subject of most profound interest and that I shall make clearly intelligible even to persons unacquainted with mechanics generally, all the material parts of the machinery.

I shall undertake to exhibit a working illustrative model both of the calculating & printing part, together with patterns of every principal piece in the machine. Also large drawings for the purpose of illustration of every important movement, train of wheel work &c.

Babbage is giving me every possible assistance and I have the models in actual progress.

I am willing to promise that I will not lecture on the subject in London until after I have the honor of delivering the lectures at your institution.

Pray let me know what your opinion is on these matters. You are of course at liberty, if you think fit to communicate with your committee on the subject²[.]

Believe me | ever yours truly | Dion Lardner

Dr Faraday