link to Talbot Project home page link to De Montfort University home page link to Glasgow University home page
Project Director: Professor Larry J Schaaf
 

Back to the letter search >

Result number 19 of 142:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >  

Document number: 1576
Date: Aug 1827
Dating: reply to Doc no 01580 of 8 Aug, but before 6 Sep when JFWH paid the bill
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: HERSCHEL John Frederick William
Collection: National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
Collection number: 1937-4801
Last updated: 30th April 2012

Dear Sir/

I received quite safe the prisms & Lenses from Utzschneider as forwarded by you, with your letter, <1> and I lose no time in thanking you for the trouble you have been at respecting them – and shall, the first time I go to Town pay into your Banker’s the amount 25:3:7 which you have been so obliging as to disburse on my acct. <2> The Prisms are really beautiful and I am rejoiced to see that the art of glass making is not lost.

Have you heard of Fresnel’s death. <3> I fear it is an event too probable in itself not to be true, though my information is not fully to be depended on, & I have seen no mention of it in any public print – but all public interest is now so absorbed in our greater loss <4> that a mere man of science however eminent drops out of the world unnoticed.

I remain my dear Sir Yours very Truly
J F W Herschel

PS. I have given up the idea of applying to Munich at present for an object glass having purchased of Mr South <5> his 7 feet Equatorial the object glass of which is 5 inches in aperture & a very good one.

I was very unlucky to be in Town when you passed Slough. I hope to be more fortunate another time.

H. F. Talbot Esqr
Lacock Abbey
near Chippenham
Somerset


Notes:

1. WHFT ordered these lenses and prisms from Joseph von Utzschneider (1763–1840), German instrument maker. He left them at Herschel’s home in Slough on 2 August but missed Herschel himself. [See Doc. No: 01580].

2. On 6 September 1827, Herschel recorded in his accounts book that he “paid into Hammersleys to Acct of H.F. Talbot Esq. for instruments from Munich (for Hussey and self, NB my share = ~ £25.” MO889, Accounts Diary, HRHRC.

3. Augustine Jean Fresnel (1788–1827), the noted French physicist, died on 14 July.

4. This is probably a reference to the Greek Wars of Indepedence; the 1827 Treaty of London would eventually lead to the destruction of the Egyptian fleet by a combined British, French, and Russian fleet on 20 October 1828. An alternative possibility could be the death of George Canning (1770–1827), Prime Minister of Britain for only 3 months who died on 8 August.

5. Sir James South (1785–1867), astronomer.

Result number 19 of 142:   < Back     Back to results list   Next >