LIVES OF THE ELECTRICIANS.
LIVES
OF
THE ELECTRICIANS:
PROFESSORS
TYNDALL, WHEATSTONE, AND MORSE.
FIRST SERIES.
BY
WILLIAM T. JEANS.
“The electric telegraph is the most precious gift which Science has
given to civilisation.”--SIR D. BREWSTER.
LONDON:
WHITTAKER & CO., 2, WHITE HART STREET,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E. C.
GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1887.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Use of lives of electricians--World-wide distribution of
electricians--Eminent authorities on biographical studies
_Pages_ ix-xvi
_PROFESSOR TYNDALL._
CHAPTER I.
Position as a scientist--Origin and early career--Work on
Ordnance Survey, and as a teacher--Student life at Marburg--
Sense of duty and early friendships _Pages_ 1-20
CHAPTER II.
Subjects of study in Germany--Discovery of diamagnetism--
Investigation of it--Scientific acquaintances--Early
connection with Royal Institution--Slaty cleavage--Glacier
phenomena explained _Pages_ 21-41
CHAPTER III.
Researches on Radiant Heat--Aqueous vapour and new
glacial theory--Calorescence--Formation of clouds--Germ
theory--Smoke respirator--Experiments on sound and its
production by heat _Pages_ 42-59
CHAPTER IV.
Alpine travels--Ascent of Monte Rosa, Mont Blanc,
Weisshorn, Col-du-Géant, and Piz Morteratch--Visit
to Vesuvius--An American’s impressions--Visit to
America--Exploration of Niagara Falls--Presidental
address to British Association _Pages_ 60-83
CHAPTER V.
Changes at Royal Institution--Development of
electricity explained--Experimental illustrations and
anecdotes--Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle--Scientific
adviser to the Trinity House _Pages_ 84-104
_PROFESSOR WHEATSTONE._
CHAPTER I.
Forecasts of the telegraph--Early descriptions and
history of it--Birth and early achievements of
Wheatstone--Enchanted lyre or first telephone--Experiments
in audition--Invention of concertina--Velocity of
electricity measured--Spectrum analysis--Lightning
conductors _Pages_ 105-132
CHAPTER II.
Origin of telegraph--Early evidences of Wheatstone’s--
Working of first needle telegraph--Dispute with Mr. W. F.
Cooke as to priority of invention--Wheatstone’s vindication
--His electro-magnetic telegraph, magneto-electric machine,
electric clock, printing telegraph, chronoscope, method of
measuring electricity, and improved needle telegraphs
_Pages_ 133-172
CHAPTER III.
First uses of telegraph--Means of arresting criminals--
Early charges for telegraphing--Formation of Electric
Telegraph Company--Wheatstone’s magneto-electric exploder--
His early experiments with submarine cables--Cable from
Dover to Calais--Faraday on Wheatstone’s A.B.C. telegraph
instrument--His automatic instruments _Pages_ 173-203
CHAPTER IV.
Origin of Dynamo--Invention of stereoscope--Improvement
by Sir D. Brewster--Illustration of earth’s rotatory
motion--Wheatstone’s cryptograph--His minor inventions--
Honours conferred on him--His death _Pages_ 204-230
_PROFESSOR MORSE._
CHAPTER I.
Birth and education--Diverted from electricity to art--
Labours as an artist in England and America
_Pages_ 231-241
CHAPTER II.
Travels to study art--First conception of Recording
Telegraph--Experiments with it in New York--Invention
of Relay--His poverty and disappointments--His
originality disputed--First exhibitions of his apparatus--
Descriptions of it--Foreign patents--Introduction of
photography--Congress asked to try his telegraph--
Appropriation granted--Experimental line made and opened
_Pages_ 242-278
CHAPTER III.
Morse Telegraph offered to Government and declined--Rapid
extension of it by Companies--Determination of longitude;
Morse transmitter and sounder--First Atlantic Cable
_Pages_ 279-301
CHAPTER IV.
Rewards of inventors--Morse patents vindicated--Rival
inventions--Pioneers of practical telegraphy--Honours and
emoluments of Morse--Statue in New York--Last days--Death
_Pages_ 302-322
INTRODUCTION.
Although this work is the first of its kind relating to electricians,
its design is neither novel nor tentative. Its object is not only to
give a popular account of the most memorable achievements of those men
who have succeeded in evolving the laws of electricity, but to convey
to unscientific readers some knowledge of the nature of those laws, and
the means by which they have been applied to the purposes of man.
In some senses electrical science and its practical applications might
be described as the creation of the present century; and the author has
been encouraged to adopt this method of giving a popular account of the
great and useful work that our electricians have done by the success of
a similar work dealing, in like manner, with the men and the inventions
that have multiplied and cheapened the production and use of the most
useful of metals.[1] An eminent reviewer of that work justly observed
that “our inventors might well boast that with a piece of steel and
the recent developments of the magnetic force--so far at least as
manufactures and commerce are concerned--they have revolutionised the
world.” It is this revolution and the men who have effected it, that
this work proposes to give an account of, hoping to realise the truth
of Tacitus’ observation, that “the age which is most fertile in bright
examples is the best qualified to make a fair estimate of them.”
Of books on electricity there is already abundance. They have been
poured from the press in yearly increasing numbers. During the present
generation the laws of electricity have been explained in every variety
of form--in the rigid demonstrations of the geometrician, in the
abstract symbolism of the mathematician, in the technical language of
numerous text-books, and in the experimental illustrations of popular
lecturers. But to the ordinary reader the theorems of the mathematician
are written in an unknown tongue; and more elementary books on
electricity, to be made interesting to the popular mind, would have to
be written in “that language which can give a soul to the objects of
sense, and a body to the abstractions of mathematics.” Add to this the
fact that, as Prof. C. A. Young puts it, “since 1848 all things have
become new in the scientific world. There is a new mathematics and a
new astronomy, a new chemistry and a new electricity, a new geology
and a new biology. Great voices have spoken, and have transformed
the world of thought and research as much as the material products
of science have altered the aspects of external life. The telegraph
and dynamo-machine have not more changed the conditions of business
and industry than the speculations of Darwin and Helmholtz and their
compeers have affected those of philosophy and science.”
The conquest of these fresh fields of knowledge has been almost the
life’s work of professional scientists; and is that which was said
of the past to continue true of the future, that ideas which in one
generation are those of the learned few, in the next become those of
the educated and middle class, and in the third those of the general
public?
Even if no work were necessary to indicate the advances made in
electrical knowledge, biographies of the electricians would still be
a desideratum. Carlyle has said of art in general that biography is
almost the one thing needful. In the literature of electricity, it has
hitherto been the one thing lacking. The subject is not destitute of
historic as well as scientific interest; and hence it is possible that
the general reader may be led to regard it from Terence’s point of
view that “whatsoever concerns mankind concerns me.” It is possible,
too, that a record of the achievements which have brought electricity
to its present state of utility, may impart a reflex interest to that
science. “Art is art,” says Carlyle, “yet man also is man. Had the
_Transfiguration_ of Raphael been painted without human hand; had it
grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric influences, as lichen
pictures do on rocks--it were a grand picture doubtless; yet nothing
like so grand as _the_ picture which on opening our eyes we everywhere
in heaven and earth see painted, and everywhere pass over with
indifference,--because the Painter was not Man. Think of this; much
lies in it. The Vatican is great; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peak of
Teneriffe; its dome is but the foolish chip of an egg-shell, compared
with that star-fretted dome where Arcturus and Orion glance for ever;
which latter notwithstanding who looks at? The biographic interest is
wanting: no Michael Angelo was He who built that ‘Temple of Immensity;’
therefore do we, pitiful Littlenesses as we are, turn rather to wonder
and to worship in the little toy-box of a Temple built by our like.”
Now it has been well observed that science is to the present age what
art was to the middle ages; and such being the case, may not a similar
interest to that described by Carlyle attach to the marvellous things
done by means of electricity? A great deal is said about electricity,
but very little about the men who made it subject to the will of man,
who converted it into “the pulse of speech” which annihilates time and
space, and who made it “the greatest blessing that science has given to
civilisation.” Of them it has often been said that “their line has gone
out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world,”
but of their lives not much has been communicated to the general public
in a popular form.
The men who have made electricity the handmaid of industry are nearly
as widespread as the subtle force with which they have had to deal.
The United Kingdom was the birth-place of the monarch of modern
machinery--the steam-engine,--and also of the leading inventions
in metallurgy which supply the framework of all our manufacturing
machinery; but the pioneers and engineers of electricity have been
of different nations and tongues. In the infancy of the science no
country produced more electricians than Germany; in the discovery
and exposition of its subtlest laws, as well as in their application
to useful purposes, no country has done more than England; while in
the most novel and most extensive use of electrical appliances for
industrial purposes the New World may be said to have outstripped the
Old. But smaller countries have also made splendid contributions to
the general store of knowledge. Volta, the first philosopher who from
his youth devoted himself to the study of electricity, and who has
given his name to one department of it, was an Italian; so was Galvani,
who discovered that a frog was the most sensitive electrometer, and
whose name became a synonym for electricity. Oersted, who made himself
famous by the discovery of the mutual action of magnets and electrical
conductors, was a Dane; while Ampère, whom some writers have called
“the Newton of electricity,” and Arago, who discovered the development
of magnetism by rotation, were Frenchmen.
Most of these pioneers have already taken their place in the Temple of
Science; and this work not being intended to go over beaten ground,
it was expected, at the outset, to comprise in one volume sufficient
biographies to illustrate the more recent progress of electrical
science and its applications to industrial purposes; but the more
the writer investigated the subject, the more it grew, not only in
magnitude, but in magnetic attractiveness. He found that to give a
complete account of the revolution effected by means of electricity
would require biographies of the three classes of men,--scientific,
engineering, and commercial--that had been instrumental in bringing
electricity to its present state of usefulness; while to do justice
to these men would require such a varied picture of their lives as
would illustrate their marvellous versatility, or their multifarious
works, thus showing that they were among the ornaments as well as the
benefactors of their race. He was encouraged to begin this work by
the success of his previous effort, and he was encouraged to continue
it beyond the limit originally intended by experiencing a feeling of
pleasure akin to that which led Plutarch to say in the course of his
work, that when he first applied himself to the writing of ancient
lives it was for the sake of others, but he pursued that study for his
own sake: for it was like living and conversing with these illustrious
men, when he considered how great and wonderful they were. More
recently Lord Bacon said he “could not but wonder that our own times
have so little value for what they enjoy, as not more frequently to
write the lives of eminent men; for though kings, princes, and great
personages are few, yet there are many excellent men who deserve
better than vague reports and barren eulogies.” Nor is there any
lack of authority as to the value of our subject in the estimation
of contemporary schools of thought. An eminent Greek scholar (Dr.
Lushington) in addressing the students of Glasgow University as their
Lord Rector in 1885, observed that “the hope of adding something more
to the store of accomplished good to mankind cheered and upheld many
daring pioneers of science, whose venerated names, now become household
words, are linked together for ever in the history of human progress,
known and honoured throughout the whole civilised world. Yet who in
the age of Watt, even in the boldest flights of presaging imagination,
could have foretold such wondrous conquests over space and time as the
spectroscope, the electric telegraph, and the telephone have revealed?”
The object of this work is to give some account of “such wondrous
conquests.” The guiding principle in its compilation has been the
maxim of Goethe, that the main object of biography is to exhibit man
in relation to the features of his time; and not as Dumas, on the
other hand, sarcastically put it, “to trace each man’s innermost life,
ascertain whether he was born on a calcareous or a granite soil, learn
whether his ancestors and himself have drunk wine, cider, or beer, or
eaten meat, fish, or vegetables--nay, to penetrate the meanest details
of his existence, to descend from the heights of criticism and from a
scientific system to the gratification of a paltry curiosity.”
This volume opens with an account of the labours of the physicist
who made a special study of the phenomena of magnetism, electricity,
and co-relative forces; and in the course of it occasion is taken to
explain certain elementary principles of these forces. It then proceeds
to give, in the life of Professor Wheatstone, an account of some of
the methods by which such scientific principles were made serviceable
to man; and it concludes with an account of the man who made it the
labour of his life to produce a telegraphic apparatus and alphabet
which have found universal favour. Technical language has been avoided
as far as possible, and yet it is hoped that the descriptions given
of electrical laws and mechanism will convey substantially correct
impressions, without entering into elaborate details or straining
after scientific exactness. While it may thus become a means of
imparting to unscientific readers some knowledge of the history of
electrical science and engineering, it is hoped that the narrative
will be found sufficiently instructive to point a moral to that wider
class of readers who take a sympathetic interest in the struggles and
achievements of those unobtrusive but beneficent men, “who, departing,
leave behind them foot-prints on the sands of time.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _The Creators of the Age of Steel._
LIVES OF THE ELECTRICIANS.
PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
CHAPTER I.
“Precious is the new light of knowledge which our Teacher
conquers for us; yet small to the new light of Love
which also we derive from him: the most important
element of any man’s performance is the Life he has
accomplished.”--CARLYLE.
The position of Professor Tyndall in the world of science is somewhat
unique. He is one of our most popular teachers of physical science; he
is one of our most successful experimentalists; and he is one of our
most attractive writers. By his discoveries he has largely extended
our knowledge of the laws of Nature; by his teaching and writings he
has probably done more than any other man in England to kindle a love
of science among the masses; and by his life he has set an example to
students of science which cannot be too widely known or appreciated.
There are men who have made greater and more useful discoveries in
science, but few have made more interesting discoveries. There are
men whose achievements have been more highly esteemed by the devotees
of pure science, but rarely has a scientific man been more popular
outside the scientific world. There are men whose culture has been
broader and deeper, but who have nevertheless lacked his facility of
exposition and gracefulness of diction. The goddess of Science, which
ofttimes was presented to the public with the repulsive severity of a
skeleton, he has clothed with flesh and blood, making her countenance
appear radiant with the glow of poesy, and susceptible even to a touch
of human sympathy; while amongst scientific contemporaries, though he
does not rank as one of those creative minds that mark an epoch in
the history of physical philosophy, he may yet be said to have “built
many a stone into the great fabric of science, which gives it an
ever-broader support and an ever-growing height without its appearing
to a fresh observer as a special and distinctive work due to the sole
exertion of any one scientific man.” He commenced his scientific career
at the time when Sir William Grove began to elaborate that theory of
the co-relation of the physical sciences which Newton suspected and
Faraday elucidated; namely, “that the various affections of matter,
heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion are
all correlative or have a reciprocal dependence: that neither, taken
abstractedly, can be said to be the essential or proximate cause of
the others, but that either may, as a force, produce the others; thus
heat may mediately produce electricity, electricity may produce heat;
and so of the rest.” Professor Tyndall has extended or simplified our
knowledge of these forces. Indeed he may be said to have revealed
some hidden links in the chain of causation. He has extended and
consolidated our knowledge of magnetism; as an explorer and discoverer
in the domain of radiant heat he stands almost alone; and as a lecturer
and experimentalist he has probably done more than any other man to
popularise the science of electricity.
There is a growing tendency in the present day to appreciate personal
achievement more highly than ancient lineage; and it is becoming more
a matter of boast in the intellectual world to say that an eminent
man was self-made than to say he was of noble birth. The subject of
this memoir can boast both of high descent and of lowly birth. “I am
distantly connected,” he says, “with one William Tyndale, who was rash
enough to boast, and to make good his boast, that he would place an
open Bible within reach of every ploughboy in England. His first reward
was exile, and then a subterranean cell in the Castle of Vilvorden.
It was a cold cell, and he humbly, but vainly, prayed for his coat to
cover him and for his books to occupy him. In due time he was taken
from the cell and set upright against a post. Round neck and post was
placed a chain, which being cunningly twisted, the life was squeezed
out of him. A bonfire was made of his body afterwards.”
It is said that the martyr Tyndale was descended from the ancient
barons of Tyndale in Northumberland, whose title eventually passed into
the family of the Percies, and that the said ancestors, leaving the
north during the war of the Roses, afterwards sought and found refuge
in Gloucestershire. Of one of these refugees the martyr of Vilvorden
was the great-grandson, and was, it is believed, born in 1484. Both
family tradition and documents show that some members of the Tyndale
family, who were cloth manufacturers, migrated from Gloucestershire to
the county of Wexford in Ireland about two centuries ago. One William
Tyndale landed on the coast of Ireland in 1670, and his descendants in
later years became scattered over Wexford, Waterford, and Carlow. Their
fortunes varied; but for our purpose it is sufficient to know that the
grandfather of the Professor had a small estate in Wexford; and that
on removing thence to the village of Leighlin Bridge on the banks of
the Barrow, county Carlow, he continued to prosper until he got into
easy circumstances. But throughout the whole race of Tyndale, from the
Martyr down to the Professor, intellectual independence appears to
have been preferred to worldly independence, and it was the exercise
of this trait that cost the Professor the small patrimony which his
grandfather had acquired. A high sense of rectitude and a benevolent
disposition are not incompatible with excessive susceptibility to
opposition; and hence persons of high principles sometimes stand like
adamant on points that to worldly minds appear too trifling even for
controversy, much less for self-sacrifice. Though the opinions of the
Tyndales may have differed, the leading principles that governed their
conduct appear to have been maintained with remarkable consistency and
self-denial. John Tyndale, the father of the Professor, differed in
opinion with his own father, William Tyndale of Leighlin Bridge, on
some point that has long since been forgotten, but in consequence of
that difference William revoked his will in favour of his first-born
son, John, and left his property to two sons of a second marriage.
Leighlin Bridge, where John Tyndall was born in humble circumstances
in 1820, was a thriving town of 2,000 inhabitants, forty-six miles
south-west of Dublin. It was then the _entrepot_ where the great
southern road from Dublin to Waterford and Cork crossed the Barrow, and
it has consequently been declining ever since the development of the
railway system diverted the traffic. It was not destitute of historical
associations, which to the Irish mind were of an exciting character.
Nor was the country destitute of natural attractions. When Tyndall
was a youth its general aspect was described as soft and agreeable,
with little of forcible or imposing scenery, yet free from those harsh
features which so frequently mar the effect of Irish landscape. In some
parts it so closely resembled the “champaign, ornate, and agreeable
districts of central England,” that it was said constantly to remind an
English traveller passing through the country of the “equable, grateful
scenery, the calm and soft-faced prettiness of territorial view to
which his mind had been accustomed.”
Yet to the ordinary English reader its loneliness would appear to
have little that was likely to fire the opening mind of the Apostle
of Physical Science. It need not, however, appear an inauspicious
birthplace to those who believe that it is no mere accident that
has made great enthusiasts generally proceed from lonely or sterile
countries.
Let us therefore look a little more into this home from which so
much light was to be reflected in after years by its then youngest
inhabitant. The Professor’s father, being left dependent on his own
resources, early joined the Irish Constabulary force and remained in
it for several years. He was regarded as a man of exceptional ability
and unswerving integrity, and was respected by all who knew him. A
sturdy politician and a zealous Orangeman, he preserved as a precious
relic a bit of flag which was said to have fluttered at the Battle of
the Boyne. In such a man Protestantism was no mere hereditary faith.
It was evolved from his own inner consciousness, and was part of his
intellectual being. His earnest and capacious mind had mastered the
works of Tillotson, Jeremy Taylor, Chillingworth, and other writers
who were not only the pillars of the Protestant faith, but still
remain unsurpassed as masters of English prose. In our own day men
of respectable theological attainments are content to reflect, in
lunar-like scintillations, the intellectual splendour, the massive
diction, the rich and glowing periods that adorn their pages; and
no better evidence could be given of the fine intelligence of John
Tyndall, of Leighlin Bridge, than to say that his delight was in the
works of these great men. It is the fashion nowadays for critics of
the “newspaper” school to sneer at their “pompous grandeur,” but it is
those living writers who in elevation of thought and graces of style
show the greatest affinity to them that are the most popular. It was
with such works that John Tyndall, _père_, sought to imbue the mind
of his only surviving son; and the subtle thoughts and inspiring
sentiments which he gathered from such classic ground must have had an
invigorating effect on his son’s susceptible mind. Besides his early
familiarity with the works of these powerful thinkers, it is said that
he soon knew the Bible almost by heart. This species of intellectual
discipline has sometimes been pointed to as presenting a strange
contrast with his excursions in later life into those regions of
natural philosophy which have sometimes been regarded as antagonistic
to theology. But it is more than probable that this early training did
much to model and chasten the rich, transparent, simple language in
which he has so beautifully expounded the laws of Nature. There is high
authority for saying that he could have had no better model. Alexander
von Humboldt, after reviewing the whole course of ancient literature
for “images reflected by the external world on the imagination,” says
that “as descriptions of nature the writings of the Old Testament are a
faithful reflection of the character of the country in which they were
composed, of the alternations of barrenness and fruitfulness, and of
the Alpine forests by which the land of Palestine was characterised.
The epic or historical narratives are marked by a graceful simplicity,
almost more unadorned than those of Herodotus, and most true to nature.
Their lyrical poetry is more adorned, and develops a rich and animated
conception of the life of nature. It might almost be said that one
single psalm (the 104th) represents the image of the whole cosmos....
The meteorological processes which take place in the atmosphere, the
formation and solution of vapour, according to the changing direction
of the wind, the play of its colours, the generation of hail, and
the rolling thunder are described with individualising accuracy,
and many questions are propounded which we in our present state of
physical knowledge may indeed be able to express under more scientific
definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily.” Most of our great
writers have acknowledged that the literature that first made a lasting
impression on their mind materially influenced their style of writing,
and in the writings of Professor Tyndall will be found a good deal of
the beautiful simplicity and poetic feeling which abound in Hebrew
literature.
The origin of his love of nature is a problem that has exercised his
own mind. “I have sometimes tried,” he says, “to trace the genesis
of the interest which I take in fine scenery. It cannot be wholly
due to my early associations; for as a boy I loved nature, and hence
to account for that love of nature I must fall back upon something
earlier than my own birth. The forgotten associations of a foregone
ancestry are probably the most potent elements in the feeling.” He
then accepts as exceedingly likely Mr. Herbert Spencer’s idea that the
mental habits and pleasurable activities of preceding generations had
descended with considerable force to him. He has, indeed, repeatedly
supported the view that intellectual character is largely formed from
ancestral peculiarities; and if that be so, he may surely be said to
have reproduced some of the higher mental characteristics of the Irish
race with marvellous exactness. “In the Celtic genius,” says Michelet,
“there is a feeling repugnant to mysticism, and which hardens itself
against the mild and winning word, refusing to lose itself in the
bosom of the moral God. The genius of the Celts is powerfully urged
towards the material and natural; and this proneness to the material
has hindered them from easily acceding to laws founded on an abstract
notion.... In the seventh century St. Columbanus said: ‘The Irish are
better astronomers than the Romans.’ It was a disciple of his, also an
Irishman, Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, who first affirmed the rotundity
of the earth and the existence of the Antipodes. All the sciences were
at this period cultivated with much renown in the Scotch and Irish
monasteries.” These characteristics appear to predominate in the Irish
intellect at the present day. Physical science, which is the glory of
our age, owes much to Ireland. Sir William Thomson, one of the most
versatile and brilliant of natural philosophers, was born in Ireland;
so was George Gabriel Stokes, one of Newton’s worthiest successors in
the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge as well as President
of the Royal Society; Henry Smith, the greatest mathematician of his
time at Oxford, who died in 1883, was an Irishman; Sir William Rowan
Hamilton, the Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, was also one of Ireland’s
most precocious sons; and in such a constellation of Irish genius
Professor Tyndall excels as a popular expositor of the laws of nature.
At the age of seven he began to show his natural taste for the works of
nature, and his father gave him glowing accounts of the achievements of
Newton as
“That sun of science, whose meridian ray
Kindled the gloom of nature into day.”
A good education was the only patrimony which his father could bestow
upon him. He was therefore sent to the best school within reach, and
remained at it till his nineteenth year. In his earlier schooldays
he preferred physical to mental exercises, and thus became expert in
running, swimming, climbing, and other sports. The branch of study in
which he excelled was mathematics. Under the tuition of a good teacher
in an Irish national school, he acquired a knowledge of elementary
algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and conic sections. His favourite
“arithmetic” was the treatise of Professor Thomson, the father of Sir
William Thomson, who in later years became one of his most brilliant
contemporaries. At the age of seventeen he showed exceptional facility
in solving geometrical problems, and on his way home from school, in
company with his teacher, he would work out demonstrations on the snow
in winter. But even that accessory he became able to dispense with; for
he could so clearly present the relations of space to his mind without
the aid of diagrams, that he was able to draw mentally the lines
illustrating the solution of complex problems and to preserve this
mental image so distinctly that he could reason upon it as correctly as
on the diagrams drawn upon paper required by ordinary students. When
he came to solid geometry he was able by means of this power of mental
representation to dispense with models, which to other students were
indispensable.
His powers of reasoning were not confined to mathematics. In his youth
he was accustomed to debate with his father the points of doctrine that
divide the Protestant from the Roman Catholic Church, reasoning high
“of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate.” Sometimes the son took
the Protestant side and at other times the Romish side; and in either
case he showed much dialectical skill and theological knowledge. He
also took more than ordinary interest in the study of English grammar,
which he has described as being to his youthful mind a discipline of
the highest value and a source of unfailing delight.
Leaving school in April, 1839, he joined a division of the Ordnance
Survey then stationed in that district, under the command of Lieut.
Geo. Wynne, of the Royal Engineers, who afterwards became an intimate
friend of his, and to whom he has frequently expressed his obligation
for acts of kindness that promoted his welfare in after life. About
that time a good deal of astonishment was publicly expressed at the
mathematical powers of one of the many boys employed in calculations
on the Ordnance Survey; his name was Alexander Gwin, a native of
Derry, and it was reported that at the age of eight years he had
got by rote the fractional logarithms from 1 to 1,000, which he
could repeat in regular rotation, or otherwise. His rapidity and
correctness in calculating trigonometrical distances, triangles, &c.,
were extraordinary: he could make a return, in acres, roods, and
perches, in less than one minute of any quantity of land, on receiving
the surveyor’s chained distances; a calculation which the greatest
arithmetician would take nearly an hour to do, and would not be so sure
of accuracy at the end of that time.
The intention of young Tyndall was to become a civil engineer, which
then appeared a most attractive profession to him. As a preliminary
qualification he determined to master all the operations of the
surveyors. Draftsmen being the best paid, he worked as a draftsman,
but applied himself so well to learning the whole business that he
soon became able to do the work of the computor, the surveyor, and
the trigonometrical observer. He then asked to be allowed to go on
field-work, and his desire was granted. In 1841, while he was stationed
at Cork, a circumstance occurred which may be described as the turning
point in his career. He worked at mapping in company with a gentleman,
who, assuming a paternal interest in him, one day, asked the young and
promising surveyor how he employed his leisure hours. Dissatisfied with
the account given, the gentleman said to him: “You have five hours a
day at your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to study. Had
I, when I was your age, had a friend to advise me as I now advise you,
instead of being in my present subordinate position, I should be the
equal of the director of the Survey.” Pregnant words! Next morning
young Tyndall was at his books by five o’clock, and the studious habits
then commenced he continued for twelve years.
Next year he was in Preston, and there becoming a member of the Preston
Mechanics’ Institute he attended its lectures and made use of its
library. One experiment which he saw there he never forgot. In a
lecture on respiration, Surgeon Cortess showed the changes produced
by the passage of air through the lungs, and in order to illustrate
the fact that what went in as free oxygen came out in carbonic acid,
he forced his breath through lime water in a flask by means of a
glass tube dipped into it; the carbonic acid from the lungs converted
the dissolved lime into carbonate of lime, which being practically
insoluble was precipitated. All this, he says, was predicted beforehand
by the lecturer, “but the delight with which I saw this prediction
fulfilled by the conversion of the limpid lime-water into a turbid
mixture of chalk and water remains with me as a memory to the present
hour” (1884.)
His diligence in study he was soon able to turn to good account. On one
occasion there was a dearth of men capable of making trigonometrical
observations when such observations were required. Tyndall offered his
services in that department; but the offer was not readily accepted.
His superiors hesitated to intrust him with a theodolite on account of
his inexperience in work of that description: and indeed there were
bets made against his chances of success. However, being allowed to
try his hand at it, he at once took his theodolite into an open field,
where he examined all its parts, and studied their uses. He then made
the trigonometrical observations prescribed to him, and when they were
compared with the measurement previously made on a larger scale, his
work was pronounced to have been successfully done. When he quitted the
Ordnance Survey in 1843 he had practically mastered all its operations.
The pay upon the Ordnance Survey, however, was very small, but having
ulterior objects in view, he considered the instruction received as
some set-off to the smallness of the pay. In order to “prevent some
young men from considering their fate specially hard, or from being
daunted, because from a very low level they had to climb a very steep
hill,” he has stated that on quitting the Ordnance Survey in 1843, his
salary was a little under twenty shillings a week, adding, “I have
often wondered since at the amount of genuine happiness which a young
fellow, of regular habits, not caring for either pipe or mug, may
extract even from pay like that.”
In 1844 affairs in this country did not look very tempting to him, and
he therefore resolved to go to America, whither some relatives had
emigrated early in the century. He had actually made preparations for
going there before some of his friends succeeded in dissuading him from
it. A sudden outburst of activity in railway construction at the same
time opened up a brighter prospect at home. After a pause, he says,
there came the mad time of the railway mania, when he was able to turn
to account the knowledge he had gained upon the Ordnance Survey; in
Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Durham, and Yorkshire especially,
he was in the thick of the fray.
As a workman at that period he has been highly spoken of by his
contemporaries. One of them has stated that “Extreme caution and
accuracy, together with dauntless perseverance under difficulties,
characterised the performance of every piece of work he took in hand.
Habitually, indeed, he pushed verification beyond the limits of all
ordinary prudence, and, on returning from a hard day’s work, he has
been known to retrace his steps for miles in order to assure himself
of the security of some ‘bench mark,’ upon whose permanence the
accuracy of his levels depended. Previous to one of those unpostponable
thirtieths of November, when all railway plans and sections had to be
deposited at the Board of Works, a series of levels had to be completed
near Keighley in Yorkshire, and Manchester reached before midnight.
The weather was stormy beyond description; levelling staves snapped in
twain before the violent gusts of wind; and level and leveller were
in constant peril of being overturned by the force of the hurricane.
Assistants grumbled ‘Impossible,’ and were only shamed into submissive
persistence by that stern resolution which, before nightfall, triumphed
over all obstacles.”
Of these stirring scenes the Professor has given a graphic account. He
says:--“It was a time of terrible toil. The day’s work in the field
usually began and ended with the day’s light, while frequently in the
office, and more especially as the awful 30th of November--the latest
date at which plans and sections of projected lines could be deposited
at the Board of Trade--drew near, there was little difference between
day and night, every hour of the twenty-four being absorbed in the work
of preparation. Strong men were broken down by the strain and labour
of that arduous time. Many pushed through, and are still among us in
robust vigour; but some collapsed, while others retired with large
fortunes, but with intellects so shattered that, instead of taking
their places in the front rank of English statesmen, as their abilities
entitled them to do, they sought rest for their brains in the quiet
lives of country gentlemen. In my own modest sphere I well remember
the refreshment I occasionally derived from five minutes’ sleep on a
deal table, with _Babbage and Callet’s Logarithms_ under my head for
a pillow. On a certain day, under grave penalties, certain levels had
to be finished, and this particular day was one of agony to me. The
atmosphere seemed filled with mocking demons, laughing at the vanity
of my efforts to get the work done. My levelling staves were snapped,
and my theodolite was overthrown by the storm. When things are at their
worst a kind of anger often takes the place of fear. It was so in the
present instance; I pushed doggedly on, and just at nightfall, when
barely able to read the figures on my levelling staff, I planted my
last ‘benchmark’ on a tombstone in Haworth Churchyard. Close at hand
was the vicarage of Mr. Brontë, where the genius was nursed which soon
afterwards burst forth and astonished the world. It was a time of mad
unrest--of downright money mania. In private residences and public
halls, in London reception rooms, in hotels and the stables of hotels,
among gipsies and costermongers, nothing was spoken of but the state of
the share market, the prospects of projected lines, the good fortune
of the ostler or potboy who by a lucky stroke of business had cleared
£10,000. High and low, rich and poor, joined in the reckless game.
During my professional connection with railways I endured three weeks’
misery. It was not defeated ambition; it was not a rejected suit; it
was not the hardship endured in either office or field; but it was the
possession of certain shares purchased in one of the lines then afloat.
The share list of the day proved the winding-sheet of my peace of mind.
I was haunted by the Stock Exchange. I became at last so savage with
myself that I went to my brokers and put away, without gain or loss,
the shares as an accursed thing.”
When in Halifax in 1845 he attended a lecture which was delivered by
Mr. George Dawson, and which appeared to make a lasting impression on
his mind. That popular lecturer then defined duty as a debt owed; and
with reference to the Chartist doctrine of “levelling” then in vogue,
he said: Supposing two men to be equal at night, and that one rises at
six while the other sleeps till nine, what becomes of the gospel of
levelling then? The Professor regarded these as the words of Nature,
and there was, according to his impression, “a kindling vigour in the
lecturer’s words that must have strengthened the sense of duty in the
minds of those who heard him.”
It was while working in Yorkshire about that time that he first met
Mr. T. A. Hirst, then an articled pupil, who became one of his most
intimate friends, and who afterwards became Professor of Mathematics
in University College, London. At that time, too, Sir John Hawkshaw,
who afterwards was Prof. Tyndall’s successor as President of the
British Association, was chief engineer on the Manchester and Leeds
Railway, and it was in his Manchester office that Tyndall spent the
last days of his railway life. A calm followed the storm of competition
just described; work became scarce, and the prospects of engineers were
once more overcast.
In these circumstances he accepted, in 1847, an appointment as a
teacher in Queenswood College, Hampshire. The well-known Socialist
reformer, Robert Owen, and his disciples built that college--a fine
edifice occupying a healthy position--and called it Harmony Hall,
as it was meant to inaugurate the millennium; the letters “C. of M”
(commencement of millennium) being inserted in flint in the brickwork
of the house. Around this college were large farms, where lessons
were given by Prof. Tyndall to the more advanced students on the
subjects which he had mastered in his previous labours. With teaching
he combined self-improvement. The chemical laboratory was under the
charge of Dr. Frankland, with whom he soon became friendly. In order
to spend part of his time in study in the chemical laboratory, Tyndall
relinquished part of his salary, and there he laid the foundations of
that knowledge of physical science which was destined afterward to be
his own passport to fame and to afford delight to many thousands of
his fellowmen. He was also very successful as a teacher in Queenswood
College. He is said to have exercised a kind of magnetic influence
over his students, and such was their faith in him that when any
disturbances arose among them he was invariably called upon to settle
them, and he did so merely by the power of moral influence and force of
character. As to his impressions of life at Queenswood, the Professor
says:--
“Schemes like Harmony Hall look admirable upon paper; but, inasmuch
as they are formed with reference to an ideal humanity, they go to
pieces when brought into collision with the real one. At Queenswood,
I learned, by practical experience, that two factors went to the
formation of a teacher. In regard to knowledge he must, of course,
be master of his work. But knowledge is not all. There might be
knowledge without power--the ability to inform without the ability to
stimulate. Both go together in the true teacher. A power of character
must underlie and enforce the work of the intellect. There were men
who could so rouse and energise their pupils--so call forth their
strength and the pleasure of its exercise--as to make the hardest work
agreeable. Without this power it is questionable whether the teacher
could ever really enjoy his vocation--with it, I do not know a higher,
nobler, and more blessed calling than that of the man who, scorning the
cramming so prevalent in our day, converts the knowledge he imparts
into a lever, to lift, exercise, and strengthen the growing minds
committed to his care.”
After pursuing their scientific studies together for some time, both
Tyndall and Frankland began to think of extending the range of their
scientific culture. But that could not then be done in England. In
1845 a man could not easily get first-class instruction in practical
chemistry and the other physical sciences that were then making great
strides forward. Between 1840 and 1850 Germany assumed the lead in
these sciences. In that country science then organised itself on a
vast scale, and from that time to this it has been growing there at a
most extraordinary rate; indeed, Prof. Huxley declared in 1884 that in
the whole history of the world there has never been such a tremendous
amount of organised energy bestowed in the development of physical
science as in Germany.
“At the time here referred to,” says Professor Tyndall, “I had emerged
from some years of hard labour the fortunate possessor of two or three
hundred pounds. By selling my services in the dearest market during
the railway madness the sum might, without dishonour, have been made a
large one; but I respected ties which existed prior to the time when
offers became lavish and temptation strong. I did not put my money in
a napkin, but cherished the design of spending it in study at a German
university. I had heard of German science, while Carlyle’s references
to German philosophy and literature caused me to regard them as a
kind of revelation from the gods. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1848,
Frankland and I started for the land of universities, as Germany is
often called. They are sown broadcast over the country, and can justly
claim to be the source of an important portion of Germany’s present
greatness.
“Our place of study was the town of Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel, and
a very picturesque town Marburg is. It clambers pleasantly up the
hillsides, and falls as pleasantly towards the Lahn. On a May day,
when the orchards are in blossom, and the chestnuts clothed with
their heavy foliage, Marburg is truly lovely. It is the same town in
which my great namesake, when even poorer than myself, published his
translation of the Bible. I lodged in the plainest manner in a street
which perhaps bore an appropriate name while I dwelt there. It was
called the Ketzerbach--the heretics’ brook--from a little historical
rivulet running through it. I wished to keep myself clean and hardy,
so I purchased a cask and had it cut in two by a carpenter. That cask,
filled with spring-water over night, was placed in my small bedroom,
and never during the years that I spent there, in winter or in summer,
did the clock of the beautiful Elizabethekirche, which was close at
hand, finish striking the hour of six in the morning before I was in my
tub. For a good portion of the time I rose an hour and a-half earlier
than this, working by lamp-light at the Differential Calculus when the
world was slumbering around me. I risked this breach of my pursuits
and this expenditure of my time and money, not because I had any
definite prospect of material profit in view, but because I thought the
cultivation of the intellect important; because, moreover, I loved my
work, and entertained a sure and certain hope that armed with knowledge
one can successfully fight one’s way through the world. I ought not
to omit one additional motive by which I was upheld at the time here
referred to--that was the sense of duty. Every young man of high aims
must, I think, have a spice of this principle within him. There are
sure to be hours in his life when his outlook will be dark, his work
difficult, and his intellectual future uncertain. Over such periods,
when the stimulus of success is absent, he must be carried by his sense
of duty. It may not be so quick an incentive as glory, but it is a
nobler one, and gives a tone to character which glory cannot impart.
That unflinching devotion to work, without which no real eminence in
science is now attainable, implies the writing at certain times of
stern resolve upon the student’s character: ‘I work not because I like
work, but because I ought to work.’ At Marburg my study was warmed
by a large stove. At first I missed the gleam and sparkle from flame
and ember, but I soon became accustomed to the obscure heat. At six
in the morning a small milch-brod and a cup of tea were taken to me.
The dinner hour was one, and for the first year or so I dined at an
hotel. In those days living was cheap in Marburg. Dinner consisted of
several courses, roast and boiled, and finished up with sweets and
dessert. The cost was a pound a month, or about eightpence per dinner.
I usually limited myself to one course, using even that in moderation,
being convinced that eating too much was quite as sinful, and almost
as ruinous, as drinking too much. By attending to such things I was
able to work without weariness for sixteen hours a day. My going to
Germany had been opposed by some of my friends as quixotic, and my
life there might, perhaps, be not unfairly thus described. I did not
work for money; I was not even spurred by ‘the last infirmity of noble
minds.’ I had been reading Fichte, and Emerson, and Carlyle, and had
been infected by the spirit of these great men, the Alpha and Omega
of whose teaching was loyalty to duty. Higher knowledge and greater
strength were within reach of the man who unflinchingly enacted his
best insight.”
Even a statue was capable of impressing this truth upon him. But it was
the statue of the man who said of his own features: “This is the face
of a man who has struggled energetically”--the man of whose portrait
Carlyle says: “Reader, to thee thyself, even now, he has one counsel
to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy. Think of living! Thy
life, were thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle
dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it is all thou hast to
front eternity with. Work, then, even as he has done and does--LIKE
A STAR, UNHASTING YET UNRESTING.” Equally impressive was the effect
produced on Professor Tyndall by even the sight of the form of such a
man. Finding himself one fine summer evening standing beside a statue
of Goethe in a German city, the contemplation of this work of art,
which he considered the most suitable memorial for a great man, excited
a motive force within his mind, which he thought no purely material
influence could generate. “There was then,” he says, “labour before me
of the most arduous kind. There were formidable practical difficulties
to be overcome, and very small means wherewith to overcome them; and
yet I felt that no material means could, as regards the task I had
undertaken, plant within me a resolve comparable with that which the
contemplation of this statue of Goethe was able to arouse.”
From his youth Tyndall appeared to have a remarkable power, not only
of attracting friends, but of retaining them. The circumstances under
which he early became acquainted with his life-long friends, General
Wynne and Professor Hirst, have already been mentioned. Hirst was
scarcely sixteen years of age when he became acquainted with Tyndall,
who was ten years older. Though they stood in the relation of pupil
and teacher, their intimacy ripened into an enduring friendship which
separation heightened rather than dissolved. An incident that occurred
while Tyndall was studying at Marburg affords honourable evidence of
this fact. The death of a relative in 1849 made Hirst the possessor of
a small patrimony, which he determined to divide between himself and
his former teacher. He accordingly pressed Professor Tyndall to accept
one half of his small fortune, but much to his disappointment Tyndall
would have none of it. Entreaties to accept it for friendship’s sake
were unavailing, but friendship, like necessity, can invent strange
means for attaining its end. Hirst took counsel with a German banker as
to a way of conveying the money to his friend, and soon a device was
carried out, by means of which the devotee of science had to sacrifice
his self-denial on the altar of friendship. While at work one morning
in his lodgings in Marburg the postman brought him a heavy roll closely
packed and sealed, which, to his astonishment, contained all sorts of
German coins amounting to 20_l._ sterling, a considerable gratuity for
a student to receive in those days. He had no alternative but to accept
it. On a subsequent occasion when Tyndall left Marburg to visit England
another friend of his youth, General Wynne, offered to replenish his
exchequer, which he feared must be nearly empty, but the offer was
declined with assurances that such generous assistance was unnecessary.