A collection of some of the printed material and letters received by Whewell between 1819 to 1833, of which the materials relating to the Cambridge elections of 1829 and 1830 form a part.
Whewell, William (1794-1866), college head and writer on the history and philosophy of scienceObservatory - Could JWL forward a copy of the enclosed to Knowle [enclosure not present].
Royal Observatory Greenwich - GA has just returned from observing lighthouses in France. He cannot tell WW everything about the Board of Visitors meeting since both GA and Adams [John C. Adams] were not informed that the meeting was to be an hour early: 'So I found Lubbock [John W. Lubbock] in full speech, very absurdly as I thought, in the same strain as his printed papers. I endeavoured to explain in reply that there was no notion of preferring numerical to algebraical expressions &c'. A vote was taken before GA left early for his train to Dover. Sir James South was there protesting against any recommendation of grant to any body for any thing. Hansen [Peter Andreas Hansen] has theoretically investigated the variation and evection, and concluded that these rays do not agree perfectly with those observed because of the figure of the moon - 'this is the whole that Lubbock means by empirical'.
CK is sorry that the separate table of tides escaped his recollection. He will pass on JWL's directions to his assistant immediately.
Observatory - Gives a note on perturbations intended for John W. Lubbock: 'If perturbations are applied to x y & z, there is no practicability of dividing the time of an apposition into different parts, as the calculation does not give the means of correcting the elements for the beginning of each part. Consequently the series used must be such as will apply from the beginning of an apposition to the end. It seems to me very probable that 5th or higher powers may be wanted'.
He congratulates him on his commercial tables: 'I admire your tables and have made use of one the 3 per cent. - It is exceedingly desirable to have the Constants of Commerce and Manufactures and when I have printed my volume I will try to make the manufacturers who are most interested collect more of them'.
Foreign Office - JB has enclosed a letter [no longer attached] from a 'Mr. Morin who is described to me as being engaged in making astronomical experiments, in Paris; from whence it has been sent to me together with many others of the like import for the "Directeurs des Observatories" at Gibraltar the Cape of Good Hope & Port Jackson'. JB does not know who the astronomer is that the letter is addressed to - does JL?