Dear Sir
I send you the promised translation of the paper by Provostaye and Desains.2 In the same number of the ‘Annales’ there is another memoir on the reflection of heat3 – the result of this I have fastened to the end of the translation in a note – if you wish to have the thing more fully of course you have only to mention it.
I hope the paper on magnetism4 has reached you safe – today I have been informed by the post office people that an error had occurred in the postage of it and they require an addition of 16 Silbegroschen5 to the amount already paid (1 Th. 22 Sg.) this I will pay them, and I mention it to you lest you should be called upon to advance the same sum. Some such precaution is necessary as the officials here appear to be exceedingly stupid – I may remark that you ought never to pay anything for the communications posted here – they are invariably prepaid. I will now look into the last number of Poggendorff6 and if I meet any thing interesting will send it to you.
Hoping to have the pleasure of hearing from you shortly.
I am dear Sir | most truly yours | John Tyndall
Wm Francis Esq
In page 270 of the ‘Annales’ there is a typographical error; the expression
25o X cos2 85 ought evidently to be 25 X cos2 85o – 7
Would you have the goodness to append the following note8 in some suitable place towards the end of my paper.
‘The deviations with the leaves would not have shewn themselves at all had strong writing paper been used instead of the foreign post! The extreme thinness of the latter enables the imperfections of the surfases to pronounce themselves when magnet and ball are separated merely by a leaf or two’.
StBPL T&F, Authors’ letters
[8 or 9 February 1851]: Tyndall recorded in his Journal (JT/2/13b/522) that he posted Provostaye and Desains, that is, this letter, on 9 February1851. He may have begun the letter the previous day.
promised translation ... Desains: the article translated is the first of those proposed by Tyndall in letter 0461 (n. 14), and promised within a week in letter 0464. The translation appeared as Frédéric Hervé de La Provostaye and Paul-Quentin Desains, ‘On the Rotary Power which the Essence of Turpentine and Saccharine Solutions exercise on Heat’, Phil. Mag., 1:6 (June 1851), pp. 466–74.
another memoir … in a note: Tyndall had proposed translating this memoir also in letter 0461 (n. 14) but here he includes only an abstract at the end of the translation of the first paper (n. 2 above).
the paper on magnetism: the memoir on magnetism posted on 4 February (see letter 0464, n. 2).
Silbegroschen: see ‘Note on Money’.
last . . . Poggendorff: as no. 10 and 11 of 1850 had been discussed in previous letters, this is presumably 1850 no. 12 or, perhaps, 1851 no. 1.
typographical error … 85o – : the error, a degree symbol in the wrong position, was not corrected in the Phil. Mag. translation.
append ... note: this change, the first of many requested by Tyndall in his magnetism memoir, was not made.
Please cite as “Tyndall0467,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0467