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Document number: 5580
Date:
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: GERGONNE Joseph Diez
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number: 28798
Collection number historic: LAM-042
Last updated: 1st September 2003

J’ai l’honneur de faire agréer à Monsieur W.H. Talbot mes sincères remerciements pour ses offres gracieuses. Le seul service qu’il puisse me rendre en Angleterre est de me tenir au courant, lors qu’il en aura le loisir, des découvertes mathématiques qu’on pourra y faire, et de vouloir bien continuer à m’adresser les résultats de ses propres recherches.

Monsieur Talbot m’a mandé dans le tems que la courbe lien des pieds des perpendiculaires abaissées du centre d’une ellipse sur ses tangentes était rectifiable; <1> j’ai voulu vérifier ce fait mais j’ai été entrainé dans des calculs que leur longueur et leur complication m’on <sic> fait abandonner. S’il voulait bien me donner quelques mots d’explication sur ce sujet, je lui en serais très obligé.

Je prie Monsieur Talbot d’agréer l’assurance bien sincère de tout mon dévouement.

JDG


Translation:

I am honoured to ask Mr W.H. Talbot to accept my sincere gratitude for his gracious offers. The only favour that he might do for me in England is to inform me, when he has time, of any mathematical discoveries which might be made there, and to be so kind as to continue to send me the results of his own research.

Mr Talbot wrote to me before that the linking curve of the bases of perpendiculars which descend from the centre of an ellipse onto its tangents was rectifiable; I wanted to verify this fact but was led into calculations whose length and degree of complication forced me to abandon them. If he were so kind as to offer me a few words of explanation on this subject, I would be most obliged to him.

I ask Mr Talbot to accept the most sincere assurance of my devotion.

JDG


Notes:

1. ‘Rectifiable’, probably meaning that there is an explicit result (formula) for the length of this closed curve.

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