George Gabriel Stokes to Faraday   3 January 1853

Pembroke College, Cambridge | Jan 3d 1853

My dear Sir,

I have no particular engagements here before the last week of the month. I can go to London any time next week or the week after. The day is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I beg you will fix according to your own convenience. There are one or two things I should like to have ready, and on that account perhaps it would be well to fix on a late day. However there is no occasion to fix on any day at present; if you send me notice a day or two before the time you fix that will be sufficient¹.

The things to which I alluded, which I should like to have ready before I go to London, are

<²> The glass vessel which has been already ordered at Newman’s.

<³> A pair of deal stands of a kind useful in optical experiments. For want of such I felt like a fish out of water the night I was at the Royal Institution⁴. Perhaps you will have the goodness to give the orders for them. It is common carpenter’s work. I send the description on a separate sheet.

I understand the Institution possesses the apparatus for a revolving mirror. If so, I hope the Managers will kindly allow me the use of it for an experiment of a good deal of scientific interest in connexion with the subject of the phenomena exhibited by solutions of quinine &c. I am writing to Mr. Barlow, as I suppose he is the proper person to apply to.

I am dear Sir | Yours very truly | G.G. Stokes

(Turn over)

P.S. I put up several letters per post in a hurry, and just after they were gone I found on my table this letter which ought to have gone to you. I must either have sent you a wrong letter or an empty envelope⁵.

Two sliding tables of deal to be made according to this pattern.

ab is a vertical hollow square tube of board resting firmly on three legs nailed to it (only two are represented in the figure). The base b not to reach quite to the floor on which the whole stands. The top a may stand 2ft. 9in. from the floor. S is a coarse wooden screw for clamping, ABCD is a square table 1ft. 4in. square, fixed to a thick square rod cd, which is attached at the centre, and stands perpendicular to its plane. The rod is of the same size as the interior of the tube ab, so as to slide within it, and to be clamped by means of the screw S to any height that may be desired. The length cd is not quite 2ft. 9in, so that when S is not screwed home d does not quite touch the ground.

The bases of the legs ought to form pretty nearly an equilateral triangle with the base b of the tube nearly over its centre.