6 Windsor Villas | Plymouth | 24 March 1863.
My dear Tyndall,
I fully comprehend the object of your letter of this morning’s post.1 It is consistent and considerate in every respect. I see now I was a little out of order in venturing to ask you to see Dr. Phipson but I did so very innocently.2 I had no idea of his personally soliciting your patronage3 but I merely thought it would afford an opportunity of your becoming better acquainted with his pretensions and enable you to put a few questions to him relative to his scientific pursuits and of course of his studies on the Continent and elsewhere as also relative to the medal awarded him by the Dutch Academy of Sciences at Haarlem.4 All this I thought might well take place without any question arising relative to your support
Let all this however be now done with. We understand each other.
I am glad to learn that you mean to call upon Thomson to retract his statement relative to you.5 I do not think it worth while in my own case to trouble him further in the matter. I think his own conscience will be a sufficient punishment for him.
I really wish I could one day have the pleasure of seeing you here and showing you my electrical instrument6 which I consider now quite perfect, and conscientiously believe there are no instruments of their class in Europe so perfect.
I have lately revised and extended my researches relative to Electrical charge, a subject which I spoke to you about in a letter now a long time since7 and one of very deep interest and have hence been led to draw up a paper on the subject for the Royal Society although without much expectation of its being honoured with a place in the Philosophical Transactions. I fear my electrical views are not considered sufficiently orthodox but I really cannot mould them so as to suit what I consider fallacious theories. Rely on it the time will soon come when the theoretical electricity of the schools must be completely revised I have some new and beautiful experimental results upon my experimental ledger. The following is an extremely curious result which you may rely on as being correct and demonstratable by rigid experiment.
Let A.B. be two spheres attracting each other at given distances, A. being charged to a given intensity B. neutral and free to take on any inductive charge which A can induce in it. How the force between these two spheres varies in the inverse duplicate ratio of the square of the tangent m.n. drawn from the touching point of one of the spheres to the other sphere. There are of course a series of consecutive steps leading to this [distinction] I will [not] however trouble you a present with details8
J. Tyndall Esq. F.R.S. etc.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/2/480
LT Typescript Only
your letter of this morning’s post: letter missing.
venturing to ask you to see Dr. Phipson but I did so very innocently: see letter 1984.
soliciting your patronage: Phipson had appealed to Tyndall for support in election to the RS.
Dutch Academy of Sciences at Haarlem: the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (Dutch Society of Sciences and Humanities) was established in 1752, and remains the oldest scientific society in that country. It was, and is still located in the city of Haarlem.
his statement relative to you: presumably this refers to Thomsons’s statement in W. Thomson and P. G. Tait, ‘Energy’, Good Words, 3 (1862), pp. 601–7. See letter 1979, and commentary in the introductory essay to this volume.
my electrical instrument: not identified.
in a letter now a long time since: possibly a letter of 21 February 1857 (see letter 1342, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 6).
with details: fragment only; letter incomplete.
Please cite as “Tyndall1986,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on