Letter from Charles S. Peirce to Carlile P. Patterson
(Stuttgart, 29.09.1877)


Spanish translation & annotations

 


Stuttgart, 1877 Sep. 29


Dear Sir,

Yesterday there was no meeting of the association owing to the races etc. in Cannstatt. Indeed, the Sttutgarters have made the mistake of providing a lot of amusements which encroach upon business  & which were totally unnecessary.

This morning after the preliminary business the president read your letter, the entire company rose & the president welcomed me to the association to which I responded thanking him in my own name & that of the Coast Survey. After the usual reports from different countries had been read (these are made the preliminary business

 

of each sitting thus distributing them over the whole time) the pendulum business was at once taken up though out of turn. Professor Plantamour as chairman of the special Committee on that subject opened & described the experiments which he had been led to make in consequence of my researches. These experiments have an extraordinary exactitude. The method is to cause the movement of the tripod to turn a little mirror in which a distant scale is seen through a telescope. In this way a magnifying power of 3000 is obtained. It is quite unnecessary to use a weight. The oscillation of the pendulum itself is sufficient.


The friction of the lever carrying the mirror has to be allowed for. When weights are used they are taken on and off rhythmically so as to keep time with the pendulum. The work of M. Plantamour which I have examined in detail is very beautiful.

I followed Plantamour & gave an account of my work. I expressed the conviction that the method used by me was perfectly satisfactory, that elasticity was not a "capricious force" (as Plantamour had called it) any more than any other & that we had only to consider its laws & proceed accordingly.

Hirsch followed. He began by retracting unconditionally his former opinions on the subject & now gave results of his own experiments especially on pillars, etc. showing that they all move. He said he had been led in consequence of

 

reading my paper.

Faye then proposed a method of obviating the source of error by swinging two pendulums at once in opposite directions.

I spoke on this subject & showed the nature of the influence that one pendulum has on another & expressed the opinion that such an influence would not be a source of difficulty with Faye's arrangement. However I preferred to use the lever with a mirror & keep it on during the experiments, the reflection of a ray of light on the wall showing whether any abnormal jar occurred during the work. This spot of light to be observed constantly.

Oppolzer & St. Clair Deville followed. Everyone speaks of my work as most important and as making an epoch in pendulum work. Monday the night-work will come up.

Yours very respectfully and truly

 C. S. Peirce

 

Please forward this letter to Cambridge.

            I received today a treatise on least squares in which my Coast Survey paper is noticed & some figures copied from it.

 


Transcription by Max Fisch, revised by Sara Barrena (2018)
Una de las ventajas de los textos en formato electrónico respecto de los textos impresos es que pueden corregirse con gran facilidad mediante la colaboración activa de los lectores que adviertan erratas, errores o simplemente mejores transcripciones. En este sentido agradeceríamos que se enviaran todas las sugerencias y correcciones a sbarrena@unav.es
Proyecto de investigación "La correspondencia del tercer viaje europeo de Charles S. Peirce (septiembre-noviembre 1877)"

Fecha del documento: 6 de febrero 2018
Última actualización: 12 de febrero 2018

[Main Page]