George Biddell Airy to Faraday   28 January 1850

Royal Observatory Greenwich | 1850 Jan 28

My dear Sir

I send you copies of two or three small papers. You have so much of the civil-engineer’s talent of applying new means to new purposes that I would almost hope that my lecture to the Astronomical Society, of December 14, might interest you1. Two of the papers contain statements relating to Lord Rosse’s telescope2, the rest I fear are worth little.

I have scarcely had a moment yet to think of my intended Lecture at the Royal Institution3. But I perceive that I shall want the following apparatus amongst others:

A helix of wire producing with a Galvanic current the effect of a magnet.

diagram

Something to show the effect of thermo-galvanic currents[.]

Most likely you have such things producible without the trouble of making or even looking for them; if so, it would save some expence and trouble[.]

I am, my dear Sir, | Yours very truly G.B. Airy

Michael Faraday Esq DCL | &c &c &

1
Airy, G.B. (1849-50). This paper dealt with the possibility of using electric signals to determine the difference in longitude between different places and for aiding the making of astronomical observations generally.
2
One of these would have been a report of a verbal account by Airy of the progress made by Lord Rosse in mounting his mirror, Month.Not.Roy.Ast.Soc.,1849-50, 10: 20-1. The other might possibly have been Airy, G.B. (1848-9).
3
See Athenaeum,23 March 1850, pp.315-7 for an account of Airy’s Friday Evening Discourse of 15 March 1850, “On the present State and Prospects of the Science of Terrestrial Magnetism”.

Please cite as “Faraday2257,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 19 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday2257