Ret. doc. Maxwell
 
Chronologie tlc
Chronologie télégraphes
Chronologie téléphone
Chronologie radio
Chronologie TV
Chronologie composants
 
Index  Scientiphiques
Bibliographies
Glossaire

 
James Clerk Maxwell
 
 
DOCUMENTS
 
Lettere col  Padre 1855
 
TO HIS FATHER.

                                                                Trin. Coll., Saturday, 21st April 1855.
                                                                           [Date in John C. M's hand.]

ots of men are going in for the H.E.I.C.S. examination,—Pomeroy, B., C., D. (the best double degree for many  years), E. (Senior Wrangler), etc., so I suppose the competition will be pretty active; but it is evident that these  men will be totally different judges, etc., tho' they may be all good in examination subjects.

Pomeroy is a genial giant, generous and strong, but hasty in condemnation tho' slow to wrath. B., intelligent and  able to detect any humbug, but his own; but excitable, and impudent in the extreme to people he does not know.   C. has strong feelings and affections, with a great amount of sympathy for all cases, but it is repressed for want of courage, and he is left with somewhat of a sneaking virtue of his own, always trying to put on the manners which
suit those he is with. D. is a good man of business, using up every scrap of his time most successfully, and honest,    I believe. E. is what I don't know, but I can conceive him reduced by circumstances to act the part of Sir Elijah   Impey in India; but I hope circumstances may be different, and then he may be a harmless mathematician or scientific referee, and leave a high reputation behind him.

                                                          Trin. Coll., Vesp. SS. Philipp. & S. Jac. 1855.

I have been working at the motion of fluids, and have got out some results. I am going to show the colour trick at   the Philosophical on Monday. Routh has been writing a book about Newton in conjunction with Lord Brougham.   Stokes is back again and lecturing as usual.

                                                                          Saturday, 5th May 1855.

The Royal Society have been very considerate in sending me my paper on colours just when I wanted it for the  Philosophical here. I am to let them see the tricks on Monday evening, and I have been there preparing their    experiments in the gas-light. There is to be a meeting in my rooms to-night to discuss Adam Smith's "Theory of    Moral Sentiments," so I must clear up my litter presently. I am working away at electricity again, and have been   working my way into the views of heavy German writers. It takes a long time to reduce to order all the notions   one gets from these men, but I hope to see my way through the subject and arrive at something intelligible in the   way of a theory.
 

                                                                          Trin. Coll., 15th May 1855.

The colour trick came off on Monday, 7th. I had the proof sheets of my paper, and was going to read; but I   changed my mind and talked instead, which was more to the purpose. There were sundry men who thought that  Blue and Yellow make Green, so I had to undeceive them. I have got Hay's book of colours out of the Univ.   Library, and am working through the specimens, matching them with the top. I have a new trick of stretching the  string horizontally above the top, so as to touch the upper part of the axis. The motion of the axis sets the string
a-vibrating in the same time with the revolutions of the top, and the colours are seen in the haze produced by the   vibration. Thomson has been spinning the top, and he finds my diagram of colours agrees with his experiments, but   he doubts about browns what is their composition. I have got colcothar brown, and can make white with it, and  blue and green; also by mixing red with a little blue and green and a great deal of black, I can match colcothar  exactly.

I have been perfecting my instrument for looking into the eye. Ware has a little beast like old Ask(8), which sits   quite steady and seems to like being looked at, and I have got several men who have large pupils and do not wish  to let me look in. I have seen the image of the candle distinctly in all the eyes I have tried, and the veins of the   retina were visible in some; but the dogs' eyes showed all the ramifications of veins, with glorious blue and   green network, so that you might copy down everything. I have shown lots of men the image in my own eye by
shutting off the light till the pupil dilated and then letting it on.

I am reading Electricity and working at Fluid Motion, and have got out the condition of a fluid being able to flow    the same way for a length of time and not wriggle about.
 

                                                                      Trin. Coll., Eve. of H. M. Nativy.

     Wednesday last I went with Hort and Elphinstone to the Ray Club, which met at Kingsley of Sidney's rooms.   Kingsley is great in photography and microscopes, and showed photographs of infusoria, very beautiful, also live  plants and animals, with oxy-hydrogen microscope.

 . . . I am getting on with my electrical calculations now and then, and working out anything that seems to help the    understanding thereof.



  
FROM HIS FATHER,

                                                                          Glenlair, 21st May 1855.

Have you put a burn in fit condition to flow evenly, and not beat on its banks from side to side? That would be the  useful practical application.
 

TO HIS FATHER.
                             (After the Meeting of the British Association at Glasgow).

                                                                 Holbrooke, by Derby, 24th Sept. 1855.

We had a paper from Brewster on the theory of three colours in the spectrum, in which he treated Whewell with    philosophic pity, commending him to the care of Prof. Wartman of Geneva, who was considered the greatest  authority in cases of his kind, cases in fact of colour-blindness. Whewell was in the room, but went out, and   avoided the quarrel; and Stokes made a few remarks, stating the case not only clearly but courteously. However,
Brewster did not seem to see that Stokes admitted his experiments to be correct, and the newspapers represented   Stokes as calling in question the accuracy of the experiments.

I am getting my electrical mathematics into shape, and I see through some parts which were rather hazy before;   but I do not find very much time for it at present, because I am reading about heat and fluids, so as not to tell lies    in my lectures. I got a note from the Society of Arts about the platometer, awarding thanks, and offering to defray    the expenses to the extent of £10, on the machine being produced in working order. When I have arranged it in   my head, I intend to write to James Bryson about it.

 I got a long letter from Thomson about colours and electricity. He is beginning to believe in my theory about all   colours being capable of reference to three standard ones, and he is very glad that I should poach on his electrical    preserves.
 

                                                                        Trin. Coll., 27th Sept. 1855.

 . . . It is difficult to keep up one's interest in intellectual matters when friends of the intellectual kind are  scarce. However, there are plenty friends not intellectual, who serve to bring out the active and practical habits   of mind, which overly-intellectual people seldom do. Wherefore, if I am to be up this term, I intend to addict   myself rather to the working men who are getting up classes, there to pups., who are in the main a vexation.   Meanwhile there is the examination to consider.
 

                                                                        Trin. Coll., 5th October 1855.

 You say Dr. Wilson has sent his book. I will write and thank him. I suppose it is about colour-blindness. I intend    to begin Poisson's papers on electricity and magnetism to-morrow. I have got them out of the library; my reading   hitherto has been of novels,—Shirley and The Newcomes, and now Westward Ho.
 

                                                                     Trin. Coll., 10th October 1855.

Macmillan proposes to get up a book of optics, with my assistance, and I feel inclined for the job. There is great   bother in making a mathematical book, especially on a subject with which you are familiar, for in correcting, it you   do as you would to pups.—look if the principle and result is right, and forget to look out for small errors in the   course of the work. However, I expect the work will be salutary, as involving hard work, and in the end much   abuse from coaches and students, and certainly no vain fame, except in Macmillan's puffs. But, if I have rightly   conceived the plan of an educational book on optics, it will be very different in manner, though not in matter, from    those now used.

         FROM HIS FATHER.

                                                                       Glenlair, 10th October 1855.

The book sent by Dr. Wilson is the full edition about colour-blindness, with notes and appendices, containing your    letter to him and notices of your communications to him on the subject. 



TO HIS FATHER.

                                                                           Trin. Coll., October 1855.

The lectures were settled last Friday. I am to do the upper division of the third year in hydrostatics and optics, and   I have most of the exercising of the questiouists.


    FROM HIS FATHER.

                                                                       Glenlair, 20th October 1855.

If you do a book for M'Millan on optics, do not let him hurry it on. Take full time to yourself to revise and   re-revise the MS., and let anything published be creditable. Do nothing in a careless manner, and so get a bad   name. A first work especially should be very carefully got up.

 When you are set to lecture on hydrostatics and optics, have you any apparatus for illustration?



                                        
TO HIS FATHER.

                                                                     Trin. Coll., 25th October 1855.

 I have refused to take pupils this term, as I want to get some time for reading and doing private mathematics, and   then I can bestow some time on the men who attend lectures.

 I go in bad weather to an institution just opened for sports of all sorts—jumping, vaultings, etc. By a little exercise    of the arms every clay, one comes to enjoy one's breath, and to sleep much better than if one did nothing but walk     on level roads.

1st November 1885

 I have been lecturing two weeks now, and the class seems improving, and they come up and ask questions, which     is a good sign.

I have been making curves to show the relations of pressure and volume in gases, and they make the subject    easier. I think I told you about the Ray Club. I was [220] elected an associate last Wednesday. . . . We had a    discussion and an essay by Pomeroy last Saturday about the position of the British nation in India, and sought    through ancient and modern history for instances of such a relation between two nations, but found none. We   seem to be in the position of having undertaken the management of India at the most critical period, when all the
old institutions and religions must break up, and yet it is by no means plain how new civilisation and  self-government among people so different from us is to be introduced. One thing is clear, that if we neglect them,   or turn them adrift again, or simply make money of them, then we must look to Spain and the Americans for our  examples of wicked management and consequent ruin.



                                       
FROM HIS FATHER.

11th November l855.

 The platometer will require much consideration, both by you and by any one that undertakes the making. You    need hardly expect the details all rightly planned at the first; many defects will occur, and new devices contrived to   conquer unforeseen difficulties in the execution. I would suspect £10 would not go far to get it into anything like   good working order. If the instrument were made, to whom is it to belong? And if it succeeds well, for whose   profit is all to be contrived? Does Bryson so understand it as to be able to make it? Could he estimate the cost, or   would he contract to get an instrument up? Fixing on a suitable size is very important.



                                        
TO HIS FATHER.

                                                                   Trin. Coll., 12th November 1855.

I attended Willis on Mechanism to-day, and I think I will attend his course, which is about the parts of machinery.    I was lecturing about the velocity of water escaping from a hole this morning. There was a great noise outside, and    we looked out at a magnificent jet from a pipe which had gone wrong in the court. So that I was saved the trouble  of making experiments. 

I was talking to Willis about the platometer, and he thinks it will work. Instead of toothed wheels to keep the    spheres in position always, I think watch-spring bands would be better.
 

                                                                     Trin. Coll., 25th November 1855.

I think I told you that Pomeroy was ill. He has had rather a sharp attack of bilious fever. His mother has come up.    He was getting round on Thursday, but he saw too many people, and was rather the worse of it. However, the    doctor says that the recovery simply requires attention, and patience, and no hurrying.

 I have been reading old books of optics, and find many things in them far better than what is new. The foreign     mathematicians are discovering for themselves methods which were well known at Cambridge in 1720, but are   now forgotten.

 I have got a contrivance made for expounding instruments. It is a squared rod, one yard long, on which slide   pieces which will carry lenses. Each piece has a wedge which fixes it tight on the rod, and a saw-shaft, with holes    through it, for fastening the pasteboard frame of the lens. By means of this I intend to set up all kinds of models of     instruments.



TO HIS FATHER.

                                                                      Trin. Coll., 3d December 1855.

 I had four questionist papers last week as my subjects come thick there; so I am full of men looking over papers. I    have also to get ready a paper on Faraday's Lines of Force for next Monday. [222]

Pomeroy is still very ill, but to-day he feels easier, and his mouth is not quite so dry and sore. He gets food every    two or three hours, and port wine every time. I go up in the morning and look after the getting up and bedmaking   department along with the nurse, after which Mrs. Pomeroy comes, and the nurse goes to bed.
 Maurice was here from Friday to Monday, inspecting the working men's education. He was at Goodwin's on    Friday night, where we met him and the teachers of the Cambridge affair. He talked of the history of the   foundation of the old colleges, and how they were mostly intended to counteract the monastic system, and allow    of work and study without retirement from the world.


                                                                          Trin. Coll., 11th December.

  Last night I lectured on Lines of Force at the Philosophical. I put off the second part of it to next term. I have been   drawing a lot of lines of force by an easy dodge. I have got to draw them accurately without calculation.   Pomeroy has been improving slowly, but sometimes stopping. He is so big that it requires a great deal to get up his   strength again. I saw Dr. Paget at the Philosophical to-day, and he seemed to think him in a fair way to recover.