Cavendish Club | Thursday
My dear Sir,
I hope to call on Saturday at the Royal Institution, but, as I suppose you may be interested to learn some particulars concerning what I may call the history of the matter in question, which I can state much more readily in writing, I herewith send you a short account of it.
So early as in the spring of /62 the main ideas contained in my paper2 had occurred to me. Being at Cambridge, I then communicated with Prof. Stokes on the subject with a view to try some experiments, but there was no apparatus to do it with. Under these circumstances I was obliged to let the subject lie over for nearly a year, until, about the end of /62, having then gone to Oxford, I broached the matter to Mr Griffith3 with whom subsequently I made some trials. I had hoped to have made some decisive experiments against the close of the meetings of the Royal Society in /63, and then against the meeting of the British Association, but circumstances beyond my control prevented my doing so. At last I communicated my plans as such, together with an account of the trials made and the experimental methods intended to be followed to the British Association—of the former you have the account, and of the latter you will find an outline in the Review4 for the last 26th Sept., of which I hope to send you a copy
Believe me | my dear Sir | Yours very truly | C. K. Akin
Prof. Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/60
LT Typescript Only
[late 1864]: letter dated in relation to letter 2077.
my paper: see letter 2075, n. 3.
Mr Griffith: Akin completed these experiments with George Griffith (c. 1834–1902), an English science educator who taught at Oxford between 1857–67 (B. P. L., ‘George Griffith’, Nature, 66 (1902), p. 64).
Review: see letter 2075, n. 2.
Please cite as “Tyndall2079,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on