George Biddell Airy to Faraday   20 March 1857

1857 March 20

My dear Sir

I have to thank you for your kind remembrance in sending me a copy of your “Conservation of Forces”1.

The mention of time in page 22 reminds me of an odd thing (having little to do with your speculations, but inducing the association connected with the word time) which may be worth mentioning to you. On three occasions only (so far as I remember) Latimer Clark has sent me notice of observed deflexions of the telegraph needles3: on those three occasions we have had magnetic disturbances; but the oddity of the thing is, that in each case our magnetic disturbances have followed the telegraph wire disturbances by about an hour. Can you make any thing of this?

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

Professor Faraday | &c &c &c

1
Faraday (1857a), Friday Evening Discourse of 27 February 1857.
2
Ibid., 353.
3
See, for example, Clark to Airy, 20 January 1857, RGO6/471, f.45 and the papers immediately following (especially f.57 and 56) which report two further deflections in mid March.

Bibliography

FARADAY, Michael (1857a): “On the Conservation of Force”, Proc. Roy. Inst., 2: 352-65.

Please cite as “Faraday3254,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 6 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday3254