Letter from James Clerk Maxwell, to William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, regarding a paper 'On the increase in resistance to the passage of an electric current produced on certain wires by stretching' by Herbert Tomlinson

Description

Has been sent the reports for the paper, 'in the hopes that we may be able to make them agree in their recommendations'. Finds the researches are important and warrant encouragement, but considers the Philosophical Transactions to be a place for researches which are the first of their kind, for exemplary methods and accurate results. If William Thomson hadn't conducted his preliminary research, or the author had continued from this research in 'a complete and accurate manner', or if there were no intermediate repository between the Transactions and the Archives, then the paper would have been recommended for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. However, the Proceedings are a good place for publication, being as they are a place for papers of 'great scientific value, but are not too bright or good for human nature's daily food'. Would like to agree with William Thomson in publishing in the Transactions, rather than 'as advocatus diaboli, consign him to the Archives below'. Asks that any decision is forwarded to George Gabriel Stokes.

Subject: Physics and Chemistry

[Published in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society of London', 1878]

Reference number

RR/8/72

Earliest possible date

24 April 1877

Physical description

Letter on paper

Page extent

3 pages

Format

Manuscript