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Date(s)
- 21 Dec. 1838 (Production)
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Étendue matérielle et support
4 pp
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Histoire archivistique
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Edinburgh - JDF's experiments with his subterranean thermometers have been so successful he has printed an early circular giving a first approximation of the results [attached to this letter - Discussion of One Year's Observations of Thermometers Sunk to Different Depths in Different Localities in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh, private circulation, 1838: The aim of the experiments was to ascertain the progress of solar heat in the crust of the globe - see JDF to WW, 21 Sept. 1836]. JDF notes that Hopkins [William Hopkins] has been giving his views respecting the interior of the earth to the Royal Society: 'Are his results wholly dynamical or partly theoretical'. A pupil of JDF's has been investigating the temperature of the interior of the globe in the manner of S.D. Poisson but with P.L. Dulong and A.T. Petit's law. JDF came to Newcastle shortly after the BAAS meeting hoping to find WW. He saw Babbage [Charles Babbage]: 'as miserable as a man could well be after all his wanton mischief at Newcastle. He wished to make me a convert to his cause, but even by his own shewing he was so utterly in the wrong that there was no hope for him'. JDF has been at work on heat: 'trying to get the law of reflection at surfaces'.