Description of Cavendish's Manuscripts on Electrictity \ i 



The Cavendish Society, for whom Dr Wilson prepared his Life of 

 Cavendish, with an account of his chemical researches, did not consider 

 that it came within their design to publish his electrical researches. 



Sir W. Harris, in whose hands the manuscripts were placed by the 

 Earl of Burlington, died in 1867. He makes several references to them in 

 his work on Frictional Electricity, edited after his death by Charles 

 Tomlinson, F.R.S., and published in 1867*, but he did not live to edit 

 the manuscripts themselves. Under these circumstances it was thought 

 desirable by Sir W. Thomson, Mr Tomlinson, and other men of science, 

 that something should be done to render the researches of Cavendish 

 accessible. 



They accordingly represented the state of the case to the Duke of 

 Devonshire, to whom the manuscripts belong, and in 1874 he placed them 

 in my hands. 



I could find no trace of Sir W. Harris' commentary referred to by 

 Dr Wilson, except that Dr Wilson mentions having returned it to Sir 

 W. Harris. 



On the inside of the lid of the box which contained the manuscripts 

 was pasted a paper in the handwriting of Sir W. Harris, of which the 

 following is a copy. 



The several parcels of manuscript papers by the late Mr Cavendish, which 

 the Earl of Burlington did me the honor to place in my hands with a view to 

 an examination and report on their contents may be taken at 24 in number. 

 Twenty of these contain sundry Philosophical papers on Mathematical and 

 Experimental Electricity, and Four sundry other Papers relating to Meteorology. 



All these Papers are more or less confused as to systematic arrangement, and 

 require some considerable attention in decyphering. They are in many instances 

 rather notes of experiments and rough drafts intended as a basis for more 

 perfect productions than finished Philosophical Papers. 



They are nevertheless extremely valuable and most interesting as evidence 

 of Mr Cavendish's great Philosophical f , and clearly prove that he had 



anticipated nearly all those great facts in common electricity which at a later 

 period were made known to the scientific world through the writings of Coulomb 

 and the French philosophers. 



Papers on Electricity. 



Of the 20 parcels of papers on electricity 18 belong to the years 1771, 1772 

 & 1773, and have never yet appeared in print; the two remaining parcels are 

 dated 1775 and 1776, and are evidently connected with the author's celebrated 

 paper on the Torpedo published in the Royal Society's Transactions for 1776. 



* P. 23 (straw electrometer), p. 45 (globe and hemispheres), p. 58 (specific 

 inductive capacity), p. 121 (measures of electricity), p. 208 (law of force), p. 223 

 (induction at a great distance). 



t So in MS. 



