Ɛpsilon

William Whewell to Faraday   29 December 1836

My dear Sir

Thinking over your intended experiments a word occurred to me which, if I understand your arrangements may do very well to express the non‑-conducting body interposed between two inductive conductors. Call it a Dielectric: Dia means through 1 and we are familiar with it in scientific words as dioptrics, diaphanous, and recently diathermal2[.] I shall be glad if this suits you[.]

I am very truly | W. Whewell

Univ. Club | Dec. 29, 1836


Address: M. Faraday Esq | Royal Institution | Albemarle Street

1
Faraday (1838a), ERE11, 1168 introduced this term. He does not seem to have used dielectric until Faraday, Diary, 27 November 1837, 3: 4237. That is after he had written the paper, the manuscript of which has not survived. See letter 1045.
2
First used in English in Melloni (1835d), 475.

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1838a): “Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Eleventh Series. On Induction”, Phil. Trans., 128: 1-40.

MELLONI, Macedonio (1835d): “On the immediate Transmission of Calorific Rays through Diathermal Bodies”, Phil. Mag., 7: 475-8.

Please cite as “Faraday0960,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0960