KELT IN IN THE SIXTIES 265 



whom they all loved and honored. They might not be able to follow 

 the lecture; but the affecting appeal which preceded it touched their 

 hearts. 



When he described to us how Joule in 1840 had experimentally 

 proved that the rate of production of heat was directly proportional to 

 the square of the electric current, and not to the first power, he used to 

 add, " And Joule had the honor to have his paper rejected by the Eoyal 

 Society. For it was an honor in those days." The rejection of the 

 results of experimental work, although scrupulously accurate, because the 

 experimenter was not already well known, filled Thomson with indigna- 

 tion. For example, the assertion of Sir William Snow Harris (Phil. 

 Trans., Roy. Soc, 1834, p. 225) that the heating power of electricity 

 was simply as the charge, as well as many other electrical errors which 

 Thomson used to dilate on, was held up to scorn before the class as 

 " fashion versus truth in science." In the Philosophical Magazine for 

 1851 Thomson published an article explaining and defending Joule's 

 work on the heating of conductors. 



This ability to sift the wheat from the chaff, the courage to cham- 

 pion what he believed to be true, even if it were not the fashion, and 

 the readiness to give up a theory when speculation lacked accurate 

 experimental corroboration were marked features in Thomson's char- 

 acter. 



During the sixties the world was very much interested in the possi- 

 bility of an Atlantic cable. The 1857 cable had broken while being 

 laid; the 1858 one had failed after one short month of existence; the 

 1865 cable snapped after 1,186 miles had been laid, and, although nine 

 days were spent in trying to pick it up, and, although it was grappled 

 many times, the rope broke; and this cable, like its predecessors, had 

 to be abandoned. A few yards of this 1865 cable that had been picked 

 up lay on the floor of the Glasgow laboratory and was often pointed 

 to by Thomson as being what had given them heart and kept off de- 

 spair. Then a prize of over three quarters of a million sterling was 

 offered to the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company if 

 they could complete the 1865 cable and lay an 1866 one. And they 

 won it. 



While it was remaining doubtful whether the two sides of the 

 Atlantic would ever be coupled electrically, Thomson's secretary not 

 unfrequently used to be sent to the Glasgow railway station a few 

 minutes before the mail train started with this urgent message from 

 Thomson : " I have gone to White's to hurry on an instrument. The 

 London mail train must on no account start to-night until I come." 

 And such was the national importance of the problem, and such the 

 honor in which Thomson was held, that the station-master obeyed. 



Many have used a Thomson's reflecting galvanometer and have 



