17th Jan 1859
My dear Sir.
I should not infer from the paper of Mr. Thomas1 ‘On the nature and action of gunpowder’2 that he is acquainted with all that is known at the present day of the constitution of elastic fluids; In my opinion he treats the fundamental point of his paper in what may be termed an unphysical spirit—masking indeed the physics of the process which he undertakes to examine under the vague term ‘impulsion’. Neither do I think that his experiments in all cases justify his conclusions. And therefore I cannot recommend the paper, in its present state, for publication in the Philosophical Transactions.3
I am not sufficiently acquainted with the facts of gunnery to say whether under the supposition of Mr Thomas anything of practical value lies concealed; but I think a paper to be accepted by the Royal Society ought to exhibit more of scientific knowledge & precision than are to be found in the present paper.
I am dear sir | very truly yours | John Tyndall
Prof. Stokes | &c. &c. &c. | Sec. R.S.
RS RR/4/264 Tyndall 17 January 1859
Mr. Thomas: William Lynall Thomas, of Anderton in southwest England, filed for a patent in 1855 (and sealed in 1856) ‘for an improvement in projectiles and in gun wads’. In 1877, he went to trial against the Queen over a patent for heavy ordnance. The trial went in his favour, and he was awarded by a special jury the sum of £8,790 11s. 6d., but the case remained under litigation.
‘On the nature and action of gunpowder’: L. Thomas, ‘On the Nature of the Action of Gunpowder’, Roy. Soc. Proc., 9 (1859), pp. 586–8. Read to the RS on 16 December 1858 by a ‘Dr. Gray’, presumably Henry Gray (1827–61), FRS, whose Gray’s Anatomy was published in 1858.
I cannot recommend the paper… the Philosophical Transactions: Tyndall acted as a referee for the Phil. Trans., reviewing submissions and sending reports to Stokes, the journal’s editor.
Please cite as “Tyndall1583,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on