Old Trafford, Manchester | Mar. 23, 1863
My dear Sir
Many thanks for your kindness in sending me copies of your papers.1 I am sorry I have nothing of much importance to send by way of return. I send by this post the last no. of Proceedings of our Phil[osophica]l Society in which I profess to have detected the heat radiated by the moon by means of a sort of wind thermometer.2 Our Secretary, Mr Baxendell3 says that Melloni had observed the same thing, but I have not yet been able to refer to his paper.4
You will observe the lucubrations of one of our local luminaries Mr Dyer.5 I was absent from the meeting or would have said something more than what is written in the little note appended,6 which note I intended as a protest. Mr Dyer & I have disputed on these matters for a good share of 20 years but now he seems to be attacking higher games. I dare say you will not think it worth while to write in reply to his observations. I once invited him to go with me to Niagara and offered to pay our joint expenses if a higher temperature was not found at the bottom than at the top of the falls.
Believe me Dear Sir | Yours very truly | James P. Joule
RI MS JT/1/J/139
RI MS JT/1/TYP/2/663
copies of your papers: Tyndall’s letter and its enclosures have not been found.
by means of a sort of wind thermometer: J. P. Joule, ‘On a New and Extremely Sensitive Thermometer’, Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 3 (1862–4), pp. 73–4 (communicated to the society, not by Joule, on 11 March 1863). Joule’s short communication was reprinted in the Phil. Mag., 25 (1863), pp. 320–1. Also reprinted as ‘A Sensitive Thermometer’, The Electrician, 10 April 1863, p. 269, with the following editorial note: ‘A few months ago, Professor Tyndall, the popular lecturer at the Royal Institution, London, described experiments which he had made, and which he alleged proved that the moon radiated cold, instead of heat. Dr. Joule’s new and sensitive instrument appears to negative, in the most direct manner, the Professor’s conclusion’.
Mr Baxendell: Joseph Baxendell (1815–1887), a Manchester-born meteorologist and astronomer who constructed a number of major telescopes around Britain for the Royal Astronomical Society, RS, and other institutions. From 1849 he made a number of significant observations of variable stars which he reported to the RS, and was elected FRS on this account in 1858. It was in this year too, that he joined the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, to which he made significant contributions throughout the rest of his career; he was one of the founders of the physical and mathematical section of the society, which saw science come to the fore in the society as a whole. In 1859 he succeeded Henry Halford Jones as astronomer to the corporation of Manchester, and later, in 1871, of Southport (ODNB).
his paper: M. Melloni, ‘Sur la Puissance Calorifique de la Lumière de la Lune’, Comptes Rendus, 22 (1846), pp. 541–4. This was also published as M. Melloni, ‘On the Calorific Power of the Light of the Moon’, Electrical Magazine, 2 (1846), pp. 340–3. Tyndall shared about Melloni’s experiment in his lectures on heat (see Heat as a Mode of Motion, p. 422).
Mr Dyer: Joseph Chessborough Dyer (see letter 1915, n. 6). Joule’s biographer, Donald S. L. Cardwell, notes that Joule is here transferring his own criticisms onto the ‘scientifically insignificant’ Dyer, and suggests that this was typical of Joule, who did not relish public disputation (D. S. L. Cardwell, James Joule. A Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 209–10).
the little note appended: J. C. Dyer, ‘Notes on the Action of Heat and Force upon Matter’, Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 3 (1862–4), pp. 77–81 (communicated to the society on 11 March 1863). This is largely Joule’s summary of Dyer’s paper.
Please cite as “Tyndall1985,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on