Royal Institution of Great Britain | 23rd Nov. 1860
My dear Roscoe,
From the combustion of metals in the arc you get quite magnificent effects with the electric lamp. The mode of proceeding is this: place a pillar of carbon on your lamp with the top hollowed out so as to form a crucible; place on this a fragment of metal—say of copper or silver or zinc, or if you wish for an alloy use brass & bring your upper point down on it. Make your slit narrow and you get with each metal a most glorious & characteristic system of bright lines.
Send the light of a second lamp thro’ the arc thus formed & I doubt not you will get the effects of Kirchhoff & Bunsen.2
I have desired Anderson3 to send you a carbon pillar—this will save you a little trouble.
The bright bands are obtained with care, but I have not myself made the experiment with the second lamp; but nothing can be easier than to try it.
Yours very since[re]ly | John Tyndall
The Royal Society of Chemistry—Ex Coll H.E. Roscoe, 1915
Henry Enfield Roscoe: Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833–1915), chemist, who had worked with Bunsen at Heidelberg. He returned to England in 1857, as Professor of Chemistry at Owens College, Manchester.
the effects of Kirchhoff & Bunsen: Roscoe gave a Friday Evening Discourse ‘On Bunsen and Kirchoff’s Spectrum Observations’ on 1 March 1861; Roy. Inst. Proc., 3 (1861), pp. 323–8.
Anderson: Charles Anderson (1790–1866), lecture and laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution 1832–66.
Please cite as “Tyndall1748,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on