Marburg, Thursday
Dear Sir
I have sifted No 10 & 11 of Poggendorff2 and now send you the result.
You should have had it two days earlier had not an attack of influenza suddenly dropped down upon me and disabled me for the aforesaid time from doing anything.
I have simply cut the kernel out of Hankel’s investigation,3 and excluded a good deal of superfluous talk.
I often imagine in translating that were the matter to be completely rewritten it might be made plainer, particularly those portions which deal with hypotheses – you must not blame me if some such portions appear darkly expressed, they are often dark in the original. I sometimes refer to the professors here but invariably find what is dark to me is equally dark to them.
However this refers to matters of secondary importance. The facts are at bottom the principal things and these I trust are so represented that he that runs may read.4
I sometimes use terms which I do not strictly remember to have seen in English for instance the term ‘anchor’ with regard to the mass of iron5 attracted by an electromagnet – the terms ‘crosspiece’ and ‘armature’6 are used in English but neither seems appropriate. If the word ‘anchor’ had not been previously used its introduction will perhaps do no harm. On looking over the papers you will perhaps see other names of instruments which need a little anglicising.
The word ‘neusilberdrahte’ in Riess memoir7 I leave to yourself to translate.
I have assumed that you have Pogg No 10 beside you and have therefore forbore sending a copy of the figure referred to in Wilde’s paper.8
I trust this will reach you timely – there is one question I should like to ask before I close. would you not think it well to omit my name on the translation of Plücker’s paper?9 In a fortnight we shall commence an investigation10 in this matter which will reply to Plücker and expand our former enquiry.11
Would you think a zusammenstellung12 of the enquiries of Senarmont13 as to the conduction of heat thro’ bodies interesting. if you have not already translated his papers I certainly think it would. Now our next attempt will be to establish a unity between the magnetic action which we have observed and the results of Senarmont – and it will be well perhaps to have these results beforehand in the phil. mag.
Since writing the above I have read two papers from Provostaye and P Desains which appear in the Nov. number of the Annales de Chim. et de Physique – one on the Pouvoir rotatoire des dissolutions Sucrées and the other Sur la Reflexion de Chaleur.14 Both these papers are highly interesting, the first especially is full of interest and I would therefore propose that it shall be translated in full.
Could it reach you in time for the February number I would translate it forthwith but you will doubtless have enough of matter. Tomorrow I shall commence the memoir on magnetism and hope to have it ready in a fortnight.15 in the mean time you will perhaps be kind enough to impart any hints which you deem necessary for my guidance.
most truly yours | John Tyndall
Wm Francis Esqre
might16 I beg of you to have the enclosed dropped in a post office for me.
StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters
[23 January 1851]: possible Thursdays (between letters 0459 and 0462) were 16th and 23rd (see letter 0460, n. 1 on the ordering of the letters). The memoir promised in a fortnight at the end of this letter was posted on 4 February (letter 0465) which suggests that Tyndall began this letter on 23 January. In letter 0465 Tyndall describes this letter as ‘recent’ which supports that 23 January date. Thus it appears that Tyndall was writing to Francis at approximately weekly intervals.
Poggendorff: the October and November issues of Poggendorff’s Annalen, 81:10 (1850), pp. 177–320 and 81:11 (1850), pp. 321–480.
Hankel’s investigation: the abridged translation of Hankels’ investigation (letter 0457, n. 3) was published as W. Hankel, ‘An Account of some Experiments upon the Electricity of Flame, and the Electric Currents thereby originated’, Phil. Mag., 2:14 (1851), pp. 542–8.
he that runs may read: make clear, so that action is taken; Tyndall alluded to, but probably unintentionally reversed, the words of, Habakkuk 2:2 ‘And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it’.
the term ‘anchor’… the mass of iron: there is no use of ‘anchor’ in the Hankel article (n. 3 above), but Tyndall used both ‘anchor’ and ‘submagnet’ in ‘Reports on . . . Electro-magnetism’ (letter 0459, n. 1). He explained in a footnote (p. 195) why he preferred ‘submagnet’ over the alternatives of ‘keeper’ and ‘anchor’, as used in German.
armature: a piece of soft iron placed in contact with the poles of a magnet, which preserves and increases the magnetic power (OED).
Riess’s memoir: see letter 0457, n. 12 for the original. The translation was not published immediately, but formed part of one of Tyndall’s later ‘Reports on the Progress of the Physical Sciences’ Phil. Mag., 3:17 (March 1852), pp. 173–85 (see letter 0514, n. 4).
Wilde’s paper: the translation (see letter 0457, n. 5 for original reference) was published as E. Wilde, ‘Description of the Gyreidometer, an Instrument suited to the exact Measurement of Newton’s Rings’, Phil. Mag., 1:7 (suppl., 1851), pp. 550–2.
Plücker’s paper: cited letter 0448, n. 9.
we shall commence: Tyndall planned to start a joint investigation with H. Knoblauch in two weeks, when he expected to finish his memoir on magnetism (n. 15 below).
our former enquiry: see letters 0395, n. 22 and 0403, n. 2 for Knoblauch and Tyndall’s earlier publications.
zusammenstellung: transl. ‘compilation’ or ‘synopsis’.
Senarmont: Henri Hureau de Sénarmont (1808–62), French mineralogist and physicist.
two papers … de Chaleur: F. De la Provostaye and P[aul-Quentin] Desains, ‘Sur le pouvoir rotatoire qu’exercent sur la chaleur l’essence de térébenthine et les dissolutions sucrées’ and ‘Mémoire sur la Réflexion de la Chaleur’, Annal. de Chimie, 30 ([Nov] 1850), pp. 267–76 and 276–86. See letter 0467 for the translations.
the memoir … a fortnight: Tyndall first referred to the proposed memoir on magnetism several weeks previously in letter 0458. It is a major topic in his letters to Francis over the following two months.
might: this postscript is written vertically, down the left-hand margin of the paper.
Please cite as “Tyndall0461,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0461