Sunday
observe whether you receive this Monday
My Dear Henry,
I send you the enclosed in case it should interest you, as I believe it is an invention something like yours. I hope you received a large dear letter from Foreign parts which was forwarded to you, as well as a box marked perishable The weather is close & airless, & productive I should think of morbid miasmata. I am so sorry for Valletort <1> passing his holidays in London! Many are going over to Havre to bathe, as it is so much cooler & prettier than Brighton.
I hope I shall find you at home on the 29th or thereabouts
affly yrs
E F
I have seen Mr Babbage <2> very often. Nobody goes to so many gay places except Lord Brougham <3> who is at every ball & Breakfast. He has now taken up that line. Mr Babbage told me I should not go to the Scientific meeting at Cork, & expressed very much the same opinion of those Meetings that I have heard you say. He says the scientific Meetings on the Continent are much better conducted
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FRANKFURT. – Some time ago, several papers stated that our townsman, Philip Wagner, had so far finished his electro-magnetic locomotive for railways, as that a perfectly successful result remained no longer doubtful. This was correct; and at present he has completed it at the workshops of the Taunus railway. Next month, as we understand from good authority, a scientific commission, appointed by the German Diet, will examine and try it, for the purpose of reporting to the Diet, whether the engine is entitled to the national premium of 100,000 florins which the Diet promised for this important invention. Persons well acquainted with Mr. Wagner, entertain not the slightest doubt that he has completely solved this great problem, which has engaged the scientific world, all over Europe, for so many years.
Notes:
1. Ernest Augustus Edgcumbe, Lord Valletort, 3rd Earl of Mt Edgcumbe (1797–1861), WHFT’s brother-in-law.
2. Prof Charles Babbage (1792–1871), mathematician & inventor.
3. Henry Peter Brougham, Baron of Brougham & Voux (1778–1868), Lord Chancellor.