Royal Institution | 26th Jan 1857
My dear Sir
It won’t take more than a minute & therefore gives me no trouble to say that all you refer to in your letter1 shall be at your command with the exception of the incandescence of the Thermoelectric pile.2 Of this there is no chance & I fear you must give it up. Incandescence, combustion, and volatilization you can produce to any amount. If you like to produce some very beautiful effects by the induced current of the Leyden battery3 it will also be in your power to do so.
Very truly Yours | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/5/1552
LT Transcript Only
your letter: letter missing. Thomson had been invited to deliver a Friday Evening Discourse at the RI on 29 February 1856 . See letter 1199.
Thermoelectric pile: a battery built from circuits of different metals. Usually, following the model built by Leopoldo Nobili (1784–1835) in 1835, it consisted of couples of soldered lengths of alternating bismuth and antimony arranged in series in blocks with the soldered sections exposed on one side. These could be heated to generate an electric current. The apparatus was considerably improved by Macedonio Melloni (1798–1854) after Nobili’s death.
Leyden battery: The Leyden jar for storing static electricity had been developed in the mid-eighteenth century. By linking jars together to form a ‘battery’, powerful bursts of static electricity could be supplied for experimental purposes.
Please cite as “Tyndall1186,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on