Faraday to Angela Georgina Burdett Coutts   17 May 18611

[Royal Institution embossed letterhead] | Friday 17 May

Dear Miss Coutts,

Tomorrow at 4 o’clk immediately after Max Muller’s lecture2 I shall shew Sir H. Holland an apparatus3 which has arrived from Munich to manifest the phenomena of light which have recently been made known to us by Bunsen & Kirchoff4[.] Mr Barlow will be here & he suggests that you would like to know of the occasion - If you are inclined to see how philosophers work & live, & so are inclined to climb our narrow stairs (for I must shew the experiments in my room) we shall be most happy to see you. The experiments will not be beautiful except to the intelligent[.]

Ever Your faithful Servant | M. Faraday

1
Dated on the basis of the reference to Müller’s lecture.
2
This was Müller’s sixth lecture (of nine) on ‘The Science of Language’, RI MS GB 2: 125.
3
The Royal Institution, through its Holland Fund, purchased a Steinheil spectroscope in May 1861. RI MS F5 B, p.1.
4
See James (1983a).

Bibliography

JAMES, Frank A.J.L. (1983a): “The Establishment of Spectro-Chemical Analysis as a Practical Method of Qualitative Analysis, 1854-1861,” Ambix, 30: 30-53.

Please cite as “Faraday4003,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 9 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday4003