George Rennie to Faraday   30 May 18451

21 Whitehall Place | 30th May 1845

My Dear Sir

I listened with much pleasure to your luminous Lecture of this evening on Artesian Wells2. But when you announced the last experiment on the rise of the Colored fluid in the lower glass pipe as a novelty it immediately occurred to me that you had not read of Venturis3 celebrated experiments on the communication of motion by the lateral action of fluids.

See Venturi Sur le communication latérale des mouverment des fluides Paris 17984 RS Jour.Phy. XIV (II) 362

See Hydrodynamics Edinb. Encyclopedia page 503 plate 318 figure 12 & 155

See also Nicholson6, Tredgold7 & others.

diagram

The red fluid is drawn up the pipes just as you exhibited in your Experiment[.]

The parties who assume this as a new invention are evidently mistaken[.]

Trusting that you will excuse this I remain

Yours very truly | George Rennie

Dr Faraday | &c &c &c

PS Venturis researches are very curious

See also Garnier8 sur les Puits Artésiens, 18269.

1
George Rennie (1791-1866, DNB). Civil engineer.
2
See Lit.Gaz., 7 June 1845, p.361 for an account of Faraday's Friday Evening Discourse of 30 May 1845 "On artesian wells and water".
3
Giovanni Battista Venturi (1746-1822, P2). Italian natural philosopher.
4
Venturi (1797).
5
Edinburgh Encyclopedia, 11: 408-568, p.503.
6
William Nicholson (1753-1815, DNB). Man of science. This refers to Venturi (1798-9).
7
Thomas Tredgold (1788-1829, DNB). Engineer. This refers to Tredgold (1826).
8
Abdon-Jacques-Frambourg Garnier (b.1785, DBF). Mining engineer.
9
Garnier (1826).

Bibliography

GARNIER, Abdon-Jacques-Frambourg (1826): Traité sur les Puits Artésiens, 2nd edition, Paris.

TREDGOLD, Thomas (editor) (1826): Tracts on Hydraulics, London.

VENTURI, Giovanni Battista (1797): Recherches expérimentales sur le principe de la communication latérale du mouvement dans les fluides, Appliqué à l'explication de différens Phénomèns hydrauliques, Paris.

VENTURI, Giovanni Battista (1798-9): “Experimental Researches concerning the Principle of the lateral Communication of Motion in Fluids, applied to the Explanation of various Hydraulic Phenomena”, Nicholson J., 2: 172-9, 273-6, 422-6, 487-94, 3: 13-22, 59-61.

Please cite as “Faraday1740,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday1740