London 3rd Dec.1854
My dear Sir
Accept my best thanks for your very kind and useful letter:1 I purposed when I wrote to you2 to introduce the subject of induced currents in my regular course of lectures upon electricity, but the matter is so interesting and so new in England that I shall reserve it for one of our Friday evening meetings,3 when I hope to have an audience fully capable of appreciating your researches. Faraday agrees with me that it is best to bring the subject forward in a Friday evening discourse.
Believe me I should consider the fact of my remarks regarding your book4 being ‘practical’ a poor recommendation if they did not at the same time recommend a kind of conduct which was right and honourable. I did not mean to advise you to ask any editor to write a notice of your book – this I should never think of doing – But if editors are not informed of the fact they remain in ignorance of the existence of the book, and the usual way of informing them is to send them a copy. The matter quite escaped my recollection or I should have written a notice of the work long ago for the Philosophical Magazine.5 I am not acquainted with any work on Frictional electricity which in point of usefulness is to be compared with yours, and therefore I think the English public ought to know that the work exists – acting on this conviction I shall endeavour to prepare a notice for the January number of the Philosophical Magazine.6
Thanking you once more for the valuable information contained in your letter
Believe me | Most sincerely yours | John Tyndall
Herr Prof. Riess | [Spandauer Straße] | Berlin7
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Stabi) Slg Darmstaedter 1855 Tyndall Be. 1–58, 46–7
your very kind and useful letter: letter 1000.
when I wrote to you: see letter 0996.
I shall … Friday evening meetings: Tyndall discussed Riess and frictional electricity in his Friday evening lecture of 1 June 1855 (see J. Tyndall, ‘On the Currents of the Leyden Battery’, Roy. Inst. Proc., vol. 2, pp. 132–5).
regarding your book: see letter 0996, n. 6.
I should have … Philosophical Magazine: Tyndall included a notice of the book in February 1855 (see letter 0996, n. 7).
I shall endeavor … Philosophical Magazine: see n. 5.
Berlin: Riess’s address was written on the reverse of the first page of the letter appears.
Please cite as “Tyndall1015,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on