Queenwood Stockbridge | 10th Oct. 1852.
My Dear Sir
I hope you will pardon my quite unintentional delay in replying to your last letter.1 I have had such a mass of work pressing upon my time and attention of late that the matter was washed away from my memory. I am aware of no single experiment, however fine, that cannot be made by a magnet such as I have described to you – all Plückers experiments are shewn by it with ease – one experiment however succeeds better with a larger magnet and that is the experiment of Zantedeschi on the repulsion of the flame of a candle2 – It would appear as if quantity of magnetism was the principal thing here. You saw the large magnet in Berlin,3 with that magnet and a very weak excitation a repulsion of a flame is obtained which, with a small magnet, would be quite unattainable, no matter how highly it might be excited. But for all ordinary purposes, and more especially for actual work the magnet I have described to you is most convenient. You might make it a little larger preserving the same proportions, but permitting the copper wire to surround the entire [legs] from top to bottom, and [thus] dispensing with the wooden rings. The cross-piece is I think more convenient than and equally powerful with the [hors<e>].4 Although possessing seve<ral> magnets Prof. Poggendorff w<as> induced to order one exactly similar to mine while I was in Berlin.5 I am well aware of [your] having laboured at Physics for I have derived both pleasure and instruction from the perusal of your papers.6 Some of your results I have long imagined to possess great significance and cannot but <thin>k that this will eventually <con>tribute to the elaboration of a <mo>re satisfactory theory of electric <a>ction than we at present possess.
believe me dear Sir | most faithfully yours | John Tyndall
Science Museum, Wroughton MS 350/1/129
your last letter: letter missing. It was perhaps a reply to letter 0660.
repulsion of the flame of a candle: refers to F. Zantedeschi’s experiments showing the repulsion of a flame by a strong magnetic field (‘On the motions presented by flame when under the electro-magnetic influence’, Phil. Mag. 31:210 (December 1847), pp. 421–4). See letter 0396, n. 10.
large magnet in Berlin: perhaps in Magnus’s laboratory, which was exceptionally well-equipped.
[hors]: the edge of the paper is damaged and this could also be ‘horse’ or, if closely squeezed in, ‘horseshoe’. The following word, possibly ‘form’, has been crossed out. Tyndall probably was referring to the horseshoe form of most electromagnets, which he eschewed (see letter 0660).
Berlin: this probably refers to the 1851 trip to Berlin where Tyndall worked with Magnus on diamagnetic research.
your papers: Andrews had published numerous papers on various aspects of physics, including electricity and heat, since the mid-1830s. See, for example, T. Andrews, ‘On the thermo-electric Currents developed between Metals and fused salts’, Phil. Mag. 10:63 (June 1837), pp. 433–40 and ‘On the Latent Heat of Vapours’, Journal of the Chemical Society, 1 (1849), pp. 27–41.
Please cite as “Tyndall0668,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 30 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0668