Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   9 December 1850

Brighton | 9 December 1850

I have just read your letter dated July 9, 1850 exactly Six months after it was written¹. I received the parcel containing it just as I was leaving London and I do not doubt it was in consequence of your moving upon the receipt of my last to you a few weeks ago². Thanks thanks my dear friend, for all your kindness. I have the Ozonometer and the summary & all the illustrative packages safe and though I have read only the letter as yet and that I may acknowledge your kindness write before I have gone through the others yet I see there is a great store of matter & pleasure for me. As to your theory of atmospheric electricity I am very glad to see you put it forward[.] Of course such a proposition has to dwell in ones mind that the idea may be compared with other ideas and the judgment become gradually matured: for it is not like the idea of a new compound which the balance & qualitative experiments may rapidly establish still as I study & think over your account of Ozone & insulated oxygen so I shall gradually be able to comprehend & imbibe the idea. Even as it is I think it is as good as any and much better than the far greater number of hypotheses which have been sent forth as to the physical cause of atmospheric electricity - and some very good men have in turns had a trial at the matter. In fact the point is a very high & a very glorious one:- we ought to understand it & I shall rejoice if it is you that have hold of the end of the subject[.] You will soon pull it clearly into sight.

The German account you sent me of insolated oxygen & your theory of atmospheric electricity³ is in the hands of a young friend who is translating it - whilst it is going on & also in reading your letter a question arises in my mind about the insolated oxygen which perhaps I shall find answered when I come to read the paper. It is whether the oxygen having been insolated is then for a time a different body out of the presence of light as well as in it. I think an American⁴ (I forget who) says that Chlorine after being exposed to the Sun is of a brighter colour & acts far more readily than such as has been kept in the dark for a time⁵. Suppose a little box blackened inside with two little glass windows that a ray of sun light could be passed through it & the box filled with oxygen & a proper test paper put up in the dark part of the box would it show change or must the test paper be in the ray to be acted upon. Of course Ozone would act upon it in the dark place is insolated oxygen like ozone in that respect? - I do not doubt that I shall find the answer amongst the data that I am in possession of and so do not trouble yourself for a reply just now[.] As told you in my last I must talk about Atmospheric Magnetism in my Friday evenings before Easter⁶ & I am glad that Ozone will fall in the Summer months⁷ because I should like to produce some of the effects here. I think I told you in my last how that oxygen in the atmosphere which I pointed out three years ago in my paper on flame & gases⁸ as so very magnetic compared to other gases is now to me the source of all the periodical variations of terrestrial magnetism and so I rejoice to think & talk at the same time of your results which deal also with that same atmospheric oxygen. What a wonderful body it is[.]

Ever My dear Schoenbein | Yours faithfully | M. Faraday

Address: Dr Schoenbein | &c &c &c &c | University | Bâle | on the Rhine