Royal Institution of Great Britain | 25th June
My dear Stokes
All the points to which you refer me shall be attended to. I wish you would give me your opinion as to the last section of the paper.2 I have such a clear physical image of the relation of radiation to conduction in my own mind that I think I must fail to express myself as I ought if what I have written could be read without exciting any intelligible idea in the mind of the reader.
However I will look over it again. With regard to the term “conducted heat” in the connexion quoted by your co-referee,3 I am as much at a loss as he is to know what it could mean. The paper was copied by my assistant4 and he possibly may have made some slips of the pen.
The manuscript5 has arrived: but I want to take the copy to Switzerland with me. I suppose you can let me have it on Thursday next! I probably start on Saturday—certainly not later than Monday.
Yours very sincerely | John Tyndall
CUL SC—add 7656
[1864]: the year is given by relation to letters 2097, 2099, 2112, 2114, 2116, 2117, 2119, and 2136.
your opinion as to the last section of the paper: see letter 2099, n. 3. This relationship of radiation to conduction exercised Tyndall since his great 1861 paper (‘On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction’, Phil. Trans., 151 (1861), pp. 1–36), in which he also had a whole final section on it (p. 33 onwards). Stokes was sceptical then as well, and there is a significant correspondence regarding this in Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 7.
your co-referee: not identified.
my assistant: not identified.
The manuscript: see n. 2.
Please cite as “Tyndall2115,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on