The Traveler

McCormmach, Russell

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_10

Russell McCormmach¹

Part of the book series: Archimedes ((ARIM,volume 36))

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Abstract

Part I of this book relies on reports by others of Cavendish’s behaviors. There is no reason to doubt them and the conclusions drawn from them, but by themselves they are missing what only Cavendish can tell us. His scientific papers do that, but they reveal only a part of his world, and his personality is largely concealed. A partial exception is journals he and Blagden kept of travels they made together in the 1780s. Because his travels exposed him to a common world, what he selected from it is revealing of his personality. His objects in traveling were to study the geology of Britain, to measure the heights of mountains with the barometer, and to visit industrial sites. The time was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

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Notes

1.
Wilson, The Five Senses, 6, 32–33.
2.
John Keay, Eccentric Travellers (London: John Murray, 1982), 13–15.
3.
Foote, “Waterton,” 574. Anon., “Charles Waterton,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Waterton.
4.
Isobel Grundy, “Motagu, Edward Wortley (1713–1776),” DNB 38: 714–16, on 716. Anon., “Edward Wortley Montagu,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wortley_Montagu.
5.
Keay, EccentricTravellers, 70. Elizabeth Baigent, “Manning, Thomas (1772–1840),” DNB 36: 509–10, on 510. Anon., “Thomas Manning,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Manning_(sinologist).
6.
Barbara Korte, English Travel Writing from Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations, trans. K. Matthias (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 44.
7.
Ibid., 6.
8.
Ibid., 9.
9.
Charles L. Batten, Jr., Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978), 3.
10.
Ibid., 5, 7, 39, 44, 72.
11.
A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 122.
12.
Batten, Pleasurable Instruction, 3, 45.
13.
Ibid., 75, 79, 91, 96–97, 109.
14.
Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Wales MDCCLXX, 2 vols. (London, 1778–83) 1: i, 415–24.
15.
Richard Joseph Sullivan, Observations Made During a Tour through Parts of England, Scotland, and Wales. In a Series of Letters (London, 1780), 141–42, 171–72.
16.
Clarke, Tour Through the South of England, Wales, and Part of Ireland, 80–89, 198–201, 274, 293–97.
17.
In 1768, Arthur Young published A Six Weeks Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales. He also published his account of this and other tours in the periodical he edited, Annals of Agriculture. The quotations above are from the latter source, not paginated. Arthur Young, Tours in England and Wales, Selected from the Annals of Agriculture, http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/contents_page.jsp?t_id=Young.
18.
Batten, Pleasurable Instruction, 32–33.
19.
Henry Cavendish, untitled, 21-page paper on observations of strata, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
20.
Constantine John Phipps, A Voyage towards the North Pole, Undertaken by His Majesty’s Command, 1773 (London, 1774), 27, 32–33, 70, 142, 145. Henry Cavendish, “Rules for Therm. for Heat of Sea,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, III(a),7.
21.
Batten, Pleasurable Instruction, 28.
22.
Ibid., 92–94.
23.
Barbara Maria Stafford, A Voyage into Substance: Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840 (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1984), 52.
24.
Charles Blagden, untitled journal of the second half of the journey of 1787, Yale, box 1, folder 2. Copy of the same, and Cavendish’s journal of the second half of the journey, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Chatsworth, X(a), 6 and 7.
25.
George Hunt to Mr. Hext, 23 January 1787, Blagden Papers, Yale, box 1, folder 4.
26.
The travelers Cavendish recommended are identified in Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1999), 261–65.
27.
Henry Cavendish, “Trials of Nairne’s Needle in Different Parts of England,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, IX, 11.
28.
Henry Cavendish, “List of Stones with Their Examination,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
29.
Cavendish, Journal of 1787, p. 6.
30.
Hunt to Hext, 23 January 1787.
31.
Wilson, Cavendish, 186.
32.
Charles Blagden to Lord Mulgrave, 2 August 1786, draft, Blagden Letterbook, Royal Society 7: 17.
33.
Charles Blagden to William Lewis, 11 July 1787, draft, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 338.
34.
Roy Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 119.
35.
Charles Blagden to John Blagden Hale, 14 September 1786, draft, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 33.
36.
The journal is in a wrapper labeled in Cavendish’s hand, “Computations & Observations in Journey 1785,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, X(a), 4, p. 8. Hereafter cited as Journal of 1785.
37.
Cavendish, Journal of 1785, 56–57.
38.
Ibid., 55.
39.
Ibid., 56.
40.
Wilson, Cavendish, 179.
41.
1 September 1786, Blagden Diary, Osborn Shelves, Yale, fc16.
42.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 4 September 1786, British Library, Add Mss 33272.
43.
Henry Cavendish, “Computations & Observations in Journey 1786,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, X(a), 3, p. 6. This part of the journal is in Cavendish’s handwriting. The other part of the journal is in the copyist’s handwriting and deals with Cavendish and Blagden’s visit to Lord Mulgrave’s alum works. This part does not appear in these footnotes.
44.
Charles Blagden to Lord Palmerston, 25 November 1800, Blagden Letters, Yale.
45.
Charles Blagden to Mrs. Grey, 28 August 1787, draft, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 351.
46.
Phipps, Voyage to the North Pole, Appendix.
47.
Henry Cavendish, “Rule for Taking Heights of Barometers,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, VIII, 12.
48.
From observations made by others, Cavendish calculated the height of the mountain. Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 5 October 1786, British Library, Add Mss 33272, pp. 19–20.
49.
Charles Blagden to William Farr, 12 June and 3 July 1787, drafts, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 67 and 7: 335.
50.
“In England the heat of the water in deep wells or quick springs is very nearly equal to the mean heat of the air, and it seems well deserving inquiry whether it is the same in other countries; for if it is so, it would afford the readiest way of comparing the mean heat of different climates.” “Meteorological Observations at Madras,” extract of a letter by Cavendish, in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 394. John Hunter, who became Cavendish’s physician at some stage, was sent to Jamaica in 1782 to superintend a military hospital, and Cavendish suggested to him, as he had to Blagden when he journeyed to North America, that he observe the heat of springs and wells while he was there. Hunter published his observations in the Philosophical Transactions in 1788, where he gave a full account of Cavendish’s hypothesis: assuming that the heat of the earth comes entirely from the sun, not from the earth’s interior, measurements of temperatures deep enough inside the earth to remain constant through the seasons ought to yield the mean temperatures of different climates. A few observations of this nature would tell as much about average climates as years of meteorological observations. John Hunter, “Some Observations on the Heat of Wells and Springs in the Island of Jamaica, and on the Temperature of the Earth Below the Surface in Different Climates,” PT 78 (1788): 53–65, on 53, 58, 65.
51.
Draft of a long paper by Blagden beginning, “The idea of determining the mean temperature of different climates by the heat of the springs and wells.” Blagden Papers, Yale, box 6, folder 26.
52.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 13 and 19 August, 4 September, 1786, British Library, Add Mss 33272, pp. 1–2, 7–8.
53.
Blagden to Banks, 31 July 1785.
54.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 17 September 1786, British Library, Add Mss 33272, pp. 9–10.
55.
Cavendish, Journal of 1785, 19.
56.
Charles Blagden to Sarah Nelmes, 1 November 1765, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, B.159. Blagden’s great aunt, Sarah Nelmes was a spinster living in Bristol.
57.
Charles Blagden to Sarah Nelmes, 26 March 1767, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, B.161.
58.
Charles Blagden to Sarah Nelmes, 19 September 1767, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, B.161a.
59.
Charles Blagden, “Memorandum of a Tour Taken for Four Days Beginning August 18, 1771,” Blagden Papers, Yale, box 1, folder 3.
60.
John Thomson, An Account of the Life, Lectures, and Writings of William Cullen, M.D., vol. 1 (Edinburgh and London, 1859), 555–56.
61.
Hannah More in 1788, quoted in Crowther, Scientists, 333.
62.
Johnson found Blagden a “delightful person.” James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. …, rev. ed., 5 vols. (London, 1821) 4: 309.
63.
Charles Blagden to Thomas Curtis, 26 July 1771, draft, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, B.162.
64.
Blagden, “Diary of Sir Charles Blagden,” 77.
65.
Blagden to Banks, 31 July 1785.
66.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 14 August 1787, British Library, Add Mss 33272, p. 35.
67.
After 1786, the year Cavendish opened his White Book, he added some more pages of experiments to a massive bundle of pages, “Experiments on Air,” the record of a sustained series of inter-connected chemical researches, which contain his experiments on the production of water from the detonation of oxygen and hydrogen, the nature of nitric acid, and the composition of the atmosphere. The later experiments did not have a comparable direction, and there is no indication that he had publication in mind for any of them. They do include an impressive investigation of the expansion of different kinds of air with heat, which determined that within the limits of accuracy of the experiments the coefficient of expansion is the same for all of them, but these experiments are out of place in the bundle, being physical not chemical. They are undated, but as they are recorded on paper bearing a 1797 watermark, they could not have been performed before that year. They appear to be Cavendish’s last important research on airs. There are later pages containing small investigations having to do with airs. In light of the great changes chemistry underwent in the late eighteenth century, the most interesting of these is a reconsideration. Writing on paper watermarked 1800, Cavendish returned to experiments he had carried out probably in late 1783 on the nature of charcoal produced by burning willow wood. He carried out computations on the earlier experiments and drew a conclusion, which he expressed partly in the new language of chemistry: “either that charcoal contains hydrogen as well as carbon & water or else that the charcoal after distillation contained some oxygen. There is no reason to think the charcoal yielded any phl[ogisticated] air.” The subject of the experiments and their timing point to a likely reason for his uncharacteristic use of the new nomenclature of chemistry in 1800. At the end of his paper, “Experiments on Air,” read to the Royal Society in January 1784, where he says it would be very difficult to decide between the chemistry of phlogiston and the new chemistry from France, he says that he prefers the old chemistry because of plants, which seem to him to be more compounded than the charcoal or ash to which they are reduced upon being burnt. According to the new chemistry, a plant is deprived of dephlogisticated air (oxygen), and upon burning it acquires it. The plant is simpler than the ash. According to the old chemistry, the plant contains phlogiston (hydrogen, or related to hydrogen), which is given up when it is burnt, making it more compounded than the ash. “Experiments on Air,” Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, II, 5: 251–65, 386–90, quotation on 390. “Experiments on Air,” Scientific Papers 2: 181.
68.
Charles Blagden to William Lewis, 26 September 1786, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 38. Kish is a form of graphite that separates from some iron in smelting. Plumbago and black lead are other names for the graphite. In 1779, Scheele showed that plumbago is essentially carbon, perhaps the reason for Cavendish’s interest.
69.
Evaluations by Thorpe and Archibald Geikie in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 431–32.
70.
Crowther, Scientists in the Industrial Revolution, 320.
71.
G. L’E. Turner, “The Membership,” in Discussing Chemistry and Steam: The Minutes of a Coffee House Philosophical Society, 1780–1787, eds. T. H. Levere and G. L’E. Turner (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 17–44.
72.
Priestley, Smeaton, and Cavendish were the first signers of the certificates for James Watt, elected 24 November 1785, and for James Keir, elected 5 December 1785. Certificates, Royal Society, vol. 5.
73.
T. H. Levere, “Introduction,” in Discussing Chemistry and Steam, 1–15. Jan Golinski, “Conversations on Chemistry: Talk about Phlogiston in the Coffee House Society, 1780–1787,” ibid., 191–205, on 193–97.
74.
The society is the subject of Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
75.
Much of this and the following five paragraphs on iron production in Britain are based on H. R. Schubert, “Extraction and Production of Metals: Iron and Steel,” History of Technology, vol. 4: The Industrial Revolution, c1750 to c1850, ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and T. I. William (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 99–117. Laurence Ince, The South Wales Iron Industry 1750–1885 (Merton: Merton Priory Press, 1993). Richard Hayman, “The Shropshire Wrought-Iron Industry c 1600–1900: A Study of Technological Change,” PhD thesis, University of Birmingham 2003.
76.
Wrought iron remained the usual kind of malleable iron until the late nineteenth century, when mild steel became practical. The steel that was made in the eighteenth century had limited uses such as files.
77.
Anon., “Forge, Furnace, What’s the Difference?” http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/essays/forge_furnace.htm.
78.
Five years after Cavendish and Blagden’s journey, 81 out of 106 blast furnaces in Britain were fueled by coke.
79.
Harris, “Wilkinson,” 1010–11.
80.
Schubert, “Extraction and Production of Metals,” 99–107.
81.
The notes, dated spring 1793, are entered loosely in Henry Cavendish, “White Book No. 1,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth. His experiments are on pp. 84–90.
82.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 8 [?] October 1786, British Library, Add Mss 33272, pp. 15–16.
83.
Charles Blagden to Claude Louis Berthollet, 21 and 24 May 1785, drafts, Blagden Letterbook, Yale.
84.
Charles Blagden to Claude Louis Berthollet, 17 November 1787, draft, ibid.
85.
Richard Kirwan to Guyton de Morveau, 2 April 1787, in A Scientific Correspondence during the Chemical Revolution: Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Richard Kirwan, 1782–1802, ed. E. Grison, M. Sadoun-Goupil, and P. Bret (Berkeley: Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California at Berkeley, 1994), 165–67.
86.
Certificates, Royal Society, 5 (3 April 1788).
87.
Henry Cavendish, “Paper Given to Cockshutt,” loose insert in “White Book No. 1.” He was probably the engineer James Cockshutt who was in charge of the forges at the Wortley Ironworks near Sheffield, and who co-managed the Cyfarthfa forge and mill for making cannon at the time Cavendish and Blagden visited there. About then, around 1787, Cockshutt together with a partner introduced Cort’s puddling and grooved rolling processes at both Wortley and Cyfarthfa. In 1804 Cavendish recommended Cockshutt for membership in the Royal Society. Ince, South Wales Iron Industry, 60. Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 1: 1500–1830, ed. A. W. Skempton (London: Thomas Telford, 2002), 156. Sheffield Trades Historical Society, “A Welcome to Wortley Ironworks,” http://www.topforge.co.uk/1955%20Guide.htm. Wortley Top Forge, “History of Iron Making at Wortley,” http://www.topforge.co.uk/History%20Notes.htm.
88.
Crowther, Scientists of the Industrial Revolution, 2–3, 321–22. With his approach, Crowther makes some interesting observations about Cavendish, but for the same reason, he can be overly schematic.
89.
Charles Blagden to John Michell, 25 April 1785 and 13 September 1785, drafts, Blagden Letterbook, Yale; in McCormmach, Weighing the World, 379–82, on 380; 395–400, on 399.
90.
Charles Blagden to William Lewis, 20 June 1785, draft, Blagden Letterbook, Yale.
91.
“Chaise” appears in an untitled document containing barometer and thermometer readings made on the 1785 journey. Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
92.
Rosamond Bayne-Powell, Travelers in Eighteenth-Century England (London: John Murray, 1951), 8–9, 19. Anon., “Georgian Index-Carriages,” http://www.georgianindex.net/horse_and_carriage/carriages.html . Anon., “Chaise,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise. History World, “History of Transport and Travel,” http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories. Repair of “chariot” was billed by a coach maker: porter’s accounts, March and December 1809, “Bedford Square. James Fuller’s Account with the Exec. of Hen: Cavendish Esq. Balance 37.6.4. Settled 30 August 1810.”
93.
Bayne-Powell, Travelers, 29–31.
94.
Ibid., 41–42.
95.
Charles Blagden to John Michell, 19 September 1786, draft; in McCormmach, Weighing the World, 409–12, on 410.
96.
Bayne-Powell, Travelers, 43–47.
97.
Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution (New York: The New Press, 1999), xi.
98.
Ibid., 32. T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution 1760–1830 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 17.
99.
Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, 34.
100.
T. E. Clarke, Guide to Merthyr-Tydfil (London, 1848), 33.
101.
Cavendish, “Journal 1785,” 53.
102.
Ibid., 57.
103.
Gloucestershire County Council, “Gloucestershire Archives: Online Catalog,” http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk. In the description of the Hale family papers, the catalog guide identifies William Lewis as John Blagden Hale’s brother-in-law, and therefore Charles Blagden’s brother-in-law. In the correspondence between William Lewis and John Blagden Hale around the time of Cavendish and Blagden’s journey, Lewis refers to his wife Mary, presumably Blagden’s sister Mary. In the correspondence, Lewis speaks of moving to Alderley. Edgar Chappell writes that in later years Lewis “married a Miss Hale of Alderley and took up his residence at that place.” Edgar L. Chappell, Historic Melingriffith: An Account of Pentyrch Iron Works and Melingriffith Tinplate Works, 2d ed. (Merton: Merton Priory Press, 1995), 25. The Blagden, Hale, and Lewis families were closely connected by marriage and business.
104.
Blagden to Lewis, 20 June 1785. William Lewis to Charles Blagden, 25 June 1785, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, L.46. William Lewis wrote to Blagden that “we shall with great pleasure receive you & your Friend M^r Cavendish, in the best manner our small House will admit of.” He said the Joy House, previously occupied by Mr. Curtis, was a quieter alternative to his house, and when the river was low only a 3-min drive. In an earlier letter to John Blagden Hale, he referred to the alternative house for Blagden and Cavendish as the Ivy House. 7 June 1785, Gloucestershire County Archives, D1086/F116. Ivy House is thought also to be near the site of another furnace, Tongwynlais Furnace, which had been abandoned by the beginning of the eighteenth century. The house is associated with the Price family, which had close business ties with the Lewis family. It was Nicholas Price father and son and Thomas Lewis who built the Pentyarch Ironworks. We are not told which house Cavendish and Blagden stayed at, but we know they had an obliging host. Philip Riden, “Early Ironworks in the Lower Taff Valley,” Morganwg 36 (1992): 69–93, on 86; http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk/browse/viewpage/llgc-id:1169834. Ince, South Wales Iron Industry, 145.
105.
Chappell, Historic Melingriffith, 23, 26, 38.
106.
William Lewis to John Blagden Hale, 12 March, 7, 22 June, 24 August, 18 October, 25, 31 December 1785; 13, 23 January 1786; 12 January 1787, Gloucestershire County Archives, D1086/116.
107.
The inns where they stayed overnight are not included in the journal for 1785, but they are in a document by Charles Blagden, cited in the next note. On any one day, I give the inn where they started out from.
108.
Charles Blagden, untitled document containing barometer and thermometer readings, journey of 1785. Henry Cavendish, untitled document containing computations of barometric heights, journey of 1785. Both documents are in Henry Cavendish, Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
109.
Charles Blagden, “Observations with Mr Auberts Small Hadley’s Quadrant of 3 Inches Radius by Ramden & an Artificial Horizon as a Circular Spirit Level,” ibid. Henry Cavendish, untitled document containing computations of true latitude, ibid.
110.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 9 October 1785, Banks Correspondence, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1.210.
111.
Stephen Mills, “Fromebridge Mill, Frampton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire,” Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology (1998): 6–22, on 8–9.
112.
Henry Cavendish, “Weight in pounds required to break wires of metal 1/10 inch diam. Taken from Boulton,” Journal of 1793, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, X(a), 2:9. Experiments on twisting of glass tubes and springing of wires, ibid., VI(b), 21. Experiments on twisting of wire tried by the time of vibration, ibid., VI(b), 22.
113.
Candida Lycett Green, “Sapperton Canal Tunnel, Gloucestershire,” http://www.candidalycettgreen.co.uk.
114.
Chappell, Historic Melingriffith, 23, 26, 38. The book which was originally published in 1940 is updated in an introduction to the second edition by Philip Riden, pp. iii–xii. The starting year at Pentyrch is given by Riden, p. v.
115.
Ince, South Wales Iron Industry, 9.
116.
Ibid., 9–11.
117.
The road, following a turnpike act of 1771, instigated by the prominent ironmaster Anthony Bacon, ended at Tongwynlais, 4 miles north of Cardiff. Richard Hayman, Working Iron in Merthyr Tydfil (Merthyr Tydfil: Merthyr Tydfil Heritage Trust, n.d.), 8. Riden writes that “there was an easy road journey, improved by turnpiking in 1767, down the valley to the quay in Cardiff.” “Introduction,” Chappell, Historic Melingriffith, iv.
118.
William Lewis to John Blagden Hale, n.d. Gloucestershire County Archives, D1086/F116.
119.
Riden, “Introduction,” Chappell, Historic Melingriffith, iv, vi.
120.
Ibid., vi, viii.
121.
Riden, “Ironworks in the Lower Taff Valley,” 87.
122.
Chappell, Historic Mellingriffith, 38. Riden, “Early Ironworks in the Lower Taff Valley,” 69. Anon., “Garth Hill,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Hill.
123.
Henry Cavendish, untitled document containing computations of barometric heights, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
124.
Charles Blagden to William Lewis, 16 February 1790, Blagden Letters, Royal Society 7: 404.
125.
Riden, “Introduction,” in Chappell, Historic Melingriffith, iv–v.
126.
Friends of Melingriffith Water Pump, “Melingriffith Tin Works,” http://friendsofmelingriffithwaterpump.org.
127.
Lewis was part owner of Dowlais. Hayman, Working Iron in Merthyr Tydfil, 3, 8–10. John A. Owen, “Merthyr Tydfil – Iron Metropolis 1790–1860,” published in the series Merthyr Historian 1 (1976): http://himedo.net/TheHopkinThomasProject/TimeLine/Wales/MerthyrTydfil/OwenMerthyrTydfil.
128.
Ince, South Wales Iron Industry, 36, 57, 80. Anon., “Samuel Homfray,” http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samuel_Homfray&oldid=513293991. If by “Merthyr” Cavendish and Blagden did not mean Penydarren, the ironworks would likely have been Dowlais, of which William Lewis was part owner.
129.
The first was Cyfarthfa.
130.
The journal mentions that Mr. Bacon leased the forges to Mr. Tauper. The second name is unfamiliar. Anthony Bacon and William Brownrigg started Cyfarthfa Ironworks in 1765. In 1771 Brownrigg retired, and in 1782 Bacon leased part of the ironworks, which included a forge, to Francis Homfray, who held it for 2 years. In 1784, it passed to David Tanner, who was owner when Cavendish and Blagden visited.
131.
Anon., “Cyfarthfa Ironworks,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyfarthfa_Ironworks. Anon., “Potting and Stamping,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potting_and_stamping. Hayman, “Shropshire Wrought-Iron Industry,” 79.
132.
Ince, South Wales Iron Industry, 60–61. Hayman, Working Iron in Merthyr Tydfil, 8. John Lloyd, The Early History of the Old South Wales Ironworks 1760 to 1840 (London: Bedford Press 1906), 51, 93–94.
133.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 31 July 1785, Banks Correspondence, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1.199.
134.
Henry Cavendish, “Tension of Aqueous Vapour,” Scientific Papers 2: 362–72.
135.
In 1793, Cavendish took another journey, this time without Blagden, initiated by the president of the Royal Society, Banks. A new steam engine had been installed at the Gregory lead mine in Derbyshire, in which both the Banks family and the Cavendish family had interests. Banks wanted Cavendish to meet him there to view it, and he wanted Watt or Boulton to join them. The notes Cavendish kept of the journey describe an experiment Watt made with a steam engine to determine the density of steam. Henry Cavendish, Journal of 1793. Joseph Banks to Matthew Boulton, 6 and 18 July, 10 August 1793, Birmingham Assay Office.
136.
Schubert, “Extraction and Production of Metals,” 103–4.
137.
S. B. Hamilton, “Building and Civil Engineering Construction,” History of Technology, vol. 4: The Industrial Revolution, c1750 to c1850, ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and T. I. William (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 442–519, on 455–56.
138.
Joseph Rathbone married Mary Darby, daughter of Abraham Darby II, and the year after Cavendish and Blagden’s visit William Rathbone married Hannah Mary Darby. Relatives of the founder owned most of the shares, some of which were mortgaged to William and Joseph Rathbone, who were large investors. Alan Birch, The Economic History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, 1784–1879 (1967; reprinted Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006), 62. The name “Rathbone’s Works” may have been an alternative: in 1781 a pumping engine “was built for Joseph Rathbone & Co, better known as the Coalbrookdale Co.” Handsworth, “1780s Pumping Engine for the Coalbrook Dale Company,” http://www.search.digitalhandsworth.org.uk/engine
139.
Hayman, “Shropshire Wrought-Iron Industry,” 71.
140.
Initially there were problems with the piston rod and the sun-and-planet gear of Watt’s engine, but by early 1786 the repairs had been made. In 1789, a second engine was installed. In 1791, Albion Mills burned down. It bears on Cavendish’s interest that in 1791 he together with Blagden, Banks, and the engineer John Smeaton were invited to inspect drawings of a steam engine and a waterwheel at Falcon Stairs, near Blackfriar’s Bridge and the site of the former Albion Mills. Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 23 October 1785, Banks Correspondence, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1:212. John Maitland to Joseph Banks, 19 December 1791, British Library, Add. Mss. 33979, p. 118.
141.
Cannon, Aristocratic Century, 6, 178–79.

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Eugene, OR, USA
Russell McCormmach

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Russell McCormmach
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McCormmach, R. (2014). The Traveler. In: The Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities. Archimedes, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_10

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_10
Published: 14 December 2013
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02437-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02438-7
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