John Prescott Joule 41 



Society, but full publication in the Transactions was 

 declined. A worse fate befell a later paper : " On the 

 Changes of Temperature produced by the Rarefaction and 

 Condensation of Air," read on June 20th, 1844, but not 

 printed by the Society even in abstract. Joule must 

 have felt severely disappointed at the time, but his dis- 

 position was so amiable and indulgent to human failings 

 that, at any rate in his later years, he did not show any 

 resentment. " I can quite understand," he once remarked, 

 " how it came about that the authorities of the Royal 

 Society refused my papers. They lived in London ; I lived 

 in Manchester ; and they naturally said : What good can 

 come out of a town where they dine in the middle of the 

 day ? " 



Joule had not, however, to wait long for recognition; 

 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1850, a year 

 before the same honour fell to Lord Kelvin and Stokes. 

 The turning point in his life came with the meeting of the 

 British Association at Oxford in June 1847, where he 

 described his experiments. According to Joule's account 

 that communication would have passed without comment 

 if a young man had not risen, and by his intelligent observa- 

 tions created a lively interest in the new theory of heat. 

 That man was William Thomson, afterwards Lord Kelvin, 

 whose recollection of the meeting differs, however, from that 

 of Joule. 



" I heard," he writes some years later, " his paper 

 read at the sections, and felt strongly impelled to rise 



and say that it must be wrong but as 



I listened on and on, I saw that Joule has certainly a 

 great truth and a great discovery and a most important 

 measurement to bring forward. So, instead of rising 

 with my objection to the meeting, I waited till it was 

 over, and said my say to Joule himself at the end of 

 the meeting." 



Whichever version of the incident be the correct one, 

 it led to a lifelong friendship, and marks the date at which 

 opposition to Joule's views began to break down. Faraday 

 was also present at the meeting, and was impressed by 

 Joule's work. 



