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2026-10-08 Internet Archive, archive.org (advanced search API and OCR text files)

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Queries (advancedsearch): title:(contributions to molecular physics) AND creator:(tyndall); title:(calorescence); creator:(tyndall, john) AND title:(radiant heat); title:(Magnus) AND title:(warme gasen) [0 hits]; creator:(Strachey) AND title:(vapour OR radiation); title:(Tyndall) AND (Magnus OR "aqueous vapour") AND date:[1860 TO 1870] [0]; title:(Akin) AND title:(calcescence) [0]; creator:(Croll) AND date:[1864 TO 1867]; title:(free molecules radiant heat); title:(annalen der physik und chemie) AND year:1884.

Priority 1: the inventor's own work not in the folder (identifiers)

  • 'Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies', Proc. RS 10 (1859) 37-39, received 26 May 1859: jstor-111604. Read in full [web] https://archive.org/details/jstor-111604 . Key passages: tube "4 feet long and 3 inches in diameter" closed by rock salt; first crude test with air and hydrogen gave "negative result"; the compensated (two-pile, differential galvanometer) method then gave "Very large effects"; "Gases vary considerably in their absorptive power"; "the self-same gas exercises a different action upon different qualities of radiant heat." No numbers, no mention of climate, CO2 or water vapour.
  • Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat (1872/1873), the collected memoirs 1859-1872: contributionstom00tynd, contributionsto01tyndgoog, bub_gb_6gkQA8-8mnMC and others. Not opened. This holds the Bakerian Lecture 1861 and memoirs II-VI, the full experimental record behind claims 1, 2, 5 that the folder has only in popular form.
  • 'On the Relation of Radiant Heat to Aqueous Vapour' (third memoir), Phil. Trans. 153 (1863): jstor-108786; abstract 1862: jstor-112261.
  • Fifth memoir / Bakerian 1864 'Contributions to Molecular Physics': philtrans05403677, jstor-108872.
  • 'On Calorescence' 1866 (the folder's 1.full.pdf, journal p.1 missing there): jstor-108936, philtrans04709783; abstract jstor-112172. The missing p.1 and Plate I can be filled from these.
  • French translation 'Radiation: Calorescence; Influence des couleurs ...' (1867): bub_gb_-b5i8ZTQOz8C.
  • 'Action of an Intermittent Beam of Radiant Heat upon Gaseous Matter' (Science, 1881): jstor-2900165 (read). Tyndall: "Distinguished men, among whom the late Professor Magnus and the late Professor Buff may be more specially mentioned, examined my experiments, and arrived at results different from mine." Lecher and Pernter (Phil. Mag. Jan 1881; Wien Sitzb. July 1880) verify the dry gases but dissent on vapours. Graham Bell's demonstration 29 Nov 1880.
  • Bakerian Lecture 1881, 'Action of Free Molecules on Radiant Heat, and its Conversion thereby into Sound', Phil. Trans. 173 (1882): philtrans03250633 (read in part; saved ia-philtrans1882-free-molecules_djvu.txt). Passages:
  • Strachey: "I here recur with renewed pleasure, to a paper published by General Strachey in the Philosophical Magazine for July, 1866. It was probably intended as a reply to the strictures of Magnus ... General Strachey calculated the fall of temperature from 6h 40m p.m., Madras time, to 5h 40m next morning ... for the years 1841, 1842, 1843 and 1844." (The folder's Heat gives a March 1850 series; here Tyndall names Madras 1841-44.)
  • Lecher and Pernter's conclusion as quoted by Tyndall: "that moist air does not perceptibly absorb the heat rays from a source of 100 C ... they found moist air a little more transparent than a vacuum".
  • Tyndall on vapour-hesion: results "of such precision and consistency" are "only compatible with the conclusion that the veritable radiators and absorbers are the molecules of the vapours."
  • Footnote: "Professor Rontgen was, I believe, the first to turn the expansion of gases to account in demonstrating the absorption of radiant heat ... His subsequent experiments with aqueous vapour, &c, agree with mine."

Priority 2: supporting or critical work by others

  • W. C. Rontgen, 'Neue Versuche uber die Absorption von Warme durch Wasserdampf', Ann. Phys. Chem. N.F. 23 (1884) pp.1-49 (and continuation pp.259-98 per Academia citation): sim_annalen-der-physik_1884_23_9 (read in part; saved ia-annalen-1884-23-9_djvu.txt). Opening (German, my translation): two of the most eminent experimenters reached opposite results and could not agree over years; "Tyndall again and again sought to prove the existence of an absorption of heat by water vapour, and Magnus stubbornly denied it", ascribing it to sources of error; as a result "many physicists still regard the question as open." Rontgen's new method measures the pressure rise of the gas itself (photo-thermal, not transmitted heat), which he says is affected differently and less by vapour-hesion and the hygroscopic rock salt. Text on his p.38 region: "since the experiments just described had proved that moist air absorbs rays of lower refrangibility", he tried to detect emission toward a -40 C beaker and found "only traces". An independent measurement by a different method bearing on claim 2.
  • Frank W. Very, Atmospheric Radiation, US Weather Bureau Bulletin G (1900): atmosphericradia00veryrich (read in part; saved). Very quotes William Ferrel's view that Magnus's film explanation "seems really to have been the case, according to experiments which have since been made", then rebuts it: Magnus's 14.75 per cent from dry air with glass end plates is "the fallacy of Magnus" (glass plates heated and acted as secondary sources, chilled by convection); Tyndall's rock-salt lens experiment with a beam not touching the walls; Lecher and Pernter "overlooked the experiment with the rock-salt lens". Very also reports Franz (3-foot tube lined with black paper) got 3.54 per cent apparent absorption for dry air, and cites Paschen 1894, Knut Angstrom (CO2 bands 2.7 and 4.25 micrometres) and Rubens and Aschkinass (CO2 band 12.5-16 micrometres, max 14.7). Very also raises his own doubts on Tyndall's humid-air proportionality table: "further elucidation is desirable". Evidence both for and against; keep both.
  • Lt-Col. Richard Strachey, 'On the Distribution of Aqueous Vapour in the upper Parts of the Atmosphere', Proc. RS 11 (1861), received 25 March 1861: paper-doi-10_1098_rspl_1860_0038 (read opening; saved). Tests Dalton's separate-vapour-atmosphere hypothesis against Himalayan observations; background to the vapour-tension-with-height figures Tyndall cites (Hooker, Strachey, Welsh).
  • Phil. Mag. vol. 29 (1865): londonedinburg4291865lond (read in part; saved). Contains C. K. Akin, 'On Calcescence' pp.28-43, Tyndall 'On the History of Negative Fluorescence' p.44, and Tyndall 'On the History of Calorescence' pp.218-31. Akin's paper reports experiments "conjointly with Mr. G. Griffith, Deputy-Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the University of Oxford": platinum foil at the focus of a concave glass mirror about 2 ft across in sunshine "became vividly incandescent, and, viewed by means of a pocket-spectroscope ..." Akin frames it as producing incandescence from "Herschellic" (infrared) rays, i.e. the reverse of Stokes's rule, the same principle as claim 4, published as a programme in 1863.
  • Also seen in search results (not opened): Tait, Sketch of Thermodynamics (1868) crediting Akin with the process "Calcescence or Calorescence".

Not reached

Contributions to Molecular Physics (full read); Magnus Phil. Mag. 23 (1862) and 22 (1861); Lecher and Pernter Phil. Mag. Jan 1881; Strachey Phil. Mag. July 1866; Buff's papers; Franz 1855; Rontgen 1881 (Ann. Phys. 248, 155-9).