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Document number: 9781
Date: 13 May 1871
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: SMYTH Charles Piazzi
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 1st September 2003

1 HILLSIDE CRESCENT

EDINBURGH.

15, ROYAL TERRACE

13 May 1871

My dear Sir,

Very many thanks for your obliging present of your three large engravings, two of which are quite new to me. I shall be very glad to see you here as you propose next week.

This, the astronomer’s new house has fortunately received some architectural arrangements to facilitate the carrying on of your art, photography; & when we get the requisite fittings, some useful work may be done. Meanwhile I have been chiefly using one of the upper rooms through the winter, for spectroscoping the frequent Auroras. The comparison spectrum has been that of acetylene, with the addition of your discovery of 1826, viz. the Lithium line. It is extraordinary indeed for how many weeks a lamp that has once received on its wick a fragment of a grain of chloride of Lithium will go on giving the red line; & which, as you remarked so long ago, is so totally different from the lines of other red flames.

& I remain

Yours very truly

C. Piazzi Smyth

<at foot of p.1:>

H. F. Talbot Esq.

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