My dear Francis,
I send you a most instructive little article2 for next months magazine – it is from the piece of du Bois3 although his name is not attached to it.4 It is worth a [thick] load of such papers as Donovan’s5 and will prove a salutary corrective to his lucubrations.6 The following note may appear at the foot of the first page:7
“In connexion with this lucid exposition of the views of Ohm8 on a point of great importance and of some difficulty to certain of our readers, we refer to a report9 upon the same subject Phil. Mag. Vol. 3. p.321.” Ed.
most truly yours | John Tyndall
RDS 27/26
[17 or 18 April 1853]: the article that Tyndall refers to in this letter was published in May 1853 (see n. 2). As Tyndall mentioned in a subsequent letter (0750) that the article would reach Francis ‘tomorrow’, this letter would be dated just before or on the same date as that letter.
little article: ‘On the Intensity of Electric Currents’, Phil. Mag. 5:33 (May 1853), pp. 363–7.
du Bois: Emil du Bois-Reymond.
name is not attached to it: the article (see n. 2) was published anonymously.
Donovan’s: Michael Donovan, Esq. (1788–?), an Irish physician and chemist and member of the Royal Irish Academy.
lucubrations: pedantic or over-elaborate meditations, often a product of nocturnal study (OED). Refers to a series of articles by Donovan on electricity appearing in Phil. Mag. in 1852. See M. Donovan, ‘On the supposed Identity of the Agent concerned in the Phenomena of ordinary Electricity, Voltaic Electricity, Electromagnetism, Magneto-electricity, and Thermo-electricity: On the Constitution of the Electric Field’, Phil. Mag. 3:16 (February 1852), pp. 117–27; 3:17 (March 1852), pp. 198–213; 3:18 (April 1852), pp. 290–9; 3:19 (May 1852), pp. 335–47; 3:20 (June 1852), pp. 445–57; 4:22 (July 1852), pp. 33–42; 4:23 (August 1852), pp. 130–8; and 4:24 (September 1852), pp. 210–19.
the following note … page: Tyndall’s editorial comment was not included in the article (see n. 2), but was instead replaced by a note from Bence Jones, who had originally requested the piece from du Bois-Reymond (Finkelstein, Emil du Bois-Reymond, p. 143). See Phil. Mag. 5:33 (May 1853), on p. 363.
Ohm: Georg Simon Ohm (1789–1854), the German physicist and mathematician responsible for Ohm’s Law, which characterizes the relationship between current and voltage when electricity is passed through a conductor.
report: J. Tyndall, ‘Dr. Tyndall’s Reports on the Progress of the Physical Sciences’, Phil. Mag. 3:19 (May 1852), pp. 321–30. This report reviewed a series of experiments to verify Ohm’s theory on voltaic current which was undertaken by Friedrich Kohlrausch and originally appeared in Poggend. Annal.
Please cite as “Tyndall0749,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on