Tyndall-John: sites researched (Investigator log)

Run 2026-10-08 (STEP I, first run)

Web time used: 9.4 minutes wall clock (timer 1791520759 to about 1791521330; searching stopped at 565 s by the timer, the cap being 600 s). Chrome was used (own tab, closed at the end); script fetches (curl) were used for pages that allow it, saved under research/pages/. No sites.md existed, so there was no recheck step. No files downloaded to research/files/: downloading a file needs the owner's approval in chat, so the downloadable items are listed by identifier below for the owner to approve.

Internet Archive queries: title:(contributions to molecular physics) AND creator:(tyndall); title:(calorescence); creator:(tyndall, john) AND title:(radiant heat); title:(Magnus) AND title:(warme gasen) [0]; 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.

Downloadable, not downloaded (owner approval needed; Internet Archive identifiers): jstor-111604 (1859 Note, 379 KB PDF); contributionstom00tynd (Contributions to Molecular Physics, 1873); jstor-108786 (aqueous vapour memoir 1863); jstor-108936 (On Calorescence 1866, complete with p.1 and plate); philtrans03250633 (Bakerian 1881, Phil. Trans. 1882); jstor-2900165 (Science 1881, 586 KB); atmosphericradia00veryrich (Very 1900); londonedinburg4291865lond (Phil. Mag. 29, 1865); sim_annalen-der-physik_1884_23_9 (Rontgen 1884).

Keywords tried

(Google, Chrome; run 2026-10-08) 1. Tyndall correspondence project letters radiant heat gases 1859 Magnus 2. replication of Tyndall's 1859 ratio spectrophotometer experiment reconstruction apparatus 3. "Akin" "calcescence" Tyndall calorescence priority 4. Lecher Pernter 1880 Absorption dunkler Warmestrahlen Gase Dampfe Wasserdampf Tyndall 5. Tyndall Magnus controversy aqueous vapour radiant heat history article Buff "moist air" 6. "calorescence" infrared absorption incandescence anti-Stokes Tyndall modern 7. Royal Institution archive Tyndall papers catalogue laboratory notebooks journals "JT/2" 8. "Franz" 1855 "Diathermanitat" Gasarten Tyndall priority absorption gases 9. Rontgen 1881 Tone intermittirende Bestrahlung Gases Tyndall photoacoustic water vapour absorption 10. Strachey 1866 "Philosophical Magazine" "aqueous vapour" nocturnal radiation Tyndall Madras OR India 11. Rontgen 1884 "Wasserdampf" Absorption Warmestrahlen Tyndall Magnus Streit 12. Tyndall 1865 "On the History of Negative Fluorescence" OR "History of Calorescence" Akin Philosophical Magazine full text 13. Protons for Breakfast John Tyndall "Infrared Activity of Moisture" de Podesta 14. "repeated Tyndall's" OR "recreated Tyndall's" OR "reconstruction of Tyndall's" experiment gases infrared thermopile 15. Macdonald "Reinterpreting and Augmenting John Tyndall's 1859" viXra 16. Heinrich Buff Tyndall Absorption Warme Wasserdampf Gase 1877 OR 1878 Annalen 17. Tyndall "blue glass" platinum pink calorescence OR "dark focus" repeated demonstration iodine bisulphide filter 18. "Correspondence of John Tyndall" volume 8 OR volume 9 1864 1865 University of Pittsburgh Press 19. Akin Karoly physicist Tyndall calorescence dispute 1864 Hungarian 20. "Akin Karoly" fizikus 1832 kalcescencia OR Tyndall (Epsilon) calorescence; Magnus aqueous; Strachey vapour; Lecher Pernter; Magnus vapour. Not yet tried: Kirchhoff / Balfour Stewart reciprocity priority; "regelation" James Thomson pressure melting; Melloni "serein"; Wells dew; "Tyndall" "Sahara" frost; Draper incandescent platinum 1847; Challis "transmutation of rays"; Frankland breath carbonic acid; Mayer 1842 equivalent; Rumford cannon boring Munich; Tyndall Barrett assistant; Mayall Brighton lens; Lubbock Chislehurst; Becker Elliott rock salt; Gassiot Ruhmkorff thermopile; Hooker Strachey Welsh vapour; German and French phrasings (Tyndall Diathermansie Gase; Tyndall "chaleur rayonnante" vapeur d'eau Magnus).

Leads for review

1. The inventor's own work

• 1859 Note, Proc. RS 10, 37-39 (received 26 May 1859), read in full: first crude test negative; the compensated two-pile method gave "Very large effects"; gases differ, and the same gas acts differently on different "qualities" of heat. No numbers, no climate. Bears on claim 1 (method and date) and on the later climate claims (claim 2), which come after 1859. [web] https://archive.org/details/jstor-111604
• Contributions to Molecular Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat (1872/73): the full memoirs 1859-1872, including the 1861 Bakerian Lecture and the aqueous-vapour memoir (Phil. Trans. 153, 1863). The folder has only the popular forms. Bears on claims 1, 2, 5. [web] https://archive.org/details/contributionstom00tynd
• On Calorescence complete copy (jstor-108936) fills the folder's missing journal p.1 and Plate I (claims 3-4).
• Bakerian Lecture 1881 (Phil. Trans. 173, 1882): renewed water-vapour experiments with polished and lamp-black-lined tubes; the photophone sounds from vapours as evidence that the absorbers are molecules, not films; cites Strachey's Madras 1841-44 night-cooling series. Bears on claims 2 and 5. [web] https://archive.org/details/philtrans03250633
• Tyndall's letters 1861-65 (Epsilon): to Herschel on Magnus's "negative results"; to Hooker, "Magnus denies the action; but he has not a foot to stand upon"; to Croll, his own statement of the calorescence principle ("waves of slow recurrence ... in return ... waves of quick recurrence"). Claims 2 and 4.
• Tyndall Journal, 18 May 1859, RI MS JT/2/13/1158 (cited by Jackson 2019): the day of the first positive result. Not seen.

2. Supporting information by others

• W. C. Rontgen, 'Neue Versuche uber die Absorption von Warme durch Wasserdampf', Ann. Phys. Chem. N.F. 23 (1884) 1-49: an independent method (pressure rise of the irradiated gas) chosen to avoid the vapour-hesion and rock-salt errors at issue; he writes that his experiments "proved that moist air absorbs rays of lower refrangibility", and that many physicists then still regarded the question as open. Tyndall (1882) states Rontgen's results with aqueous vapour "agree with mine". Claim 2. [web] https://archive.org/details/sim_annalen-der-physik_1884_23_9
• Frank W. Very, Atmospheric Radiation (US Weather Bureau Bulletin G, 1900): a US government scientist's review that defends Tyndall against Magnus (glass end plates, convection) and against Lecher and Pernter, while asking for "further elucidation" of Tyndall's humid-air proportionality table; also gives Franz's 1855 3.54 per cent for dry air, and the later band identifications for CO2 (Knut Angstrom; Rubens and Aschkinass) and water (Paschen). Claims 1-2. [web] https://archive.org/details/atmosphericradia00veryrich
• J. D. Forbes to Tyndall, 15 July 1859: surprise at "the magnitude of the effects"; asks for tube length and percentage. First outside reaction (claim 1). [web] https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall1627
• Airy (1863) and Herschel (1862, letter 1878) approval of the vapour result as reported by Tyndall; Airy's own letter: "we should be in a way for beginning Meteorology". Claim 2.
• Evidence against, to be weighed with the above: Magnus (Phil. Mag. 1861, 1862) found no vapour action and blamed films; Buff likewise (Tyndall 1881); Lecher and Pernter (Wien Sitzb. July 1880; Phil. Mag. Jan 1881) confirmed Tyndall on dry gases but found moist air "a little more transparent than a vacuum"; Ferrel as quoted by Very accepted the film explanation. Claim 2.
• G. G. Stokes to Tyndall, 13 Jan 1865: heating a solid to glow by concentrated rays "is not a little different from fluorescence"; the name "calorescence" as "negative fluorescence" was not "quite correct". This is the authority on fluorescence commenting on the principle of claim 4. [web] https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall2215
• Wikisource validated On Radiation confirms the deep reader's corrected gas values (nitric oxide 1590, olefiant gas 6030, aniseed 372) and the pink-glow footnote. Claim 1, claim 4 sub-claim. No later confirmation of the pink glow found yet.

3. Closely related work

• C. K. Akin, 'Account of Preliminary Experiments on Calcescence' (BA Report 1863) and 'On Calcescence', Phil. Mag. 29 (1865) 28-43: same principle as claim 4 (incandescence of platinum by focused "Herschellic" rays as the converse of fluorescence), with experiments made with G. Griffith (Oxford) using a 2-ft mirror in sunshine and a pocket spectroscope. Led to a priority dispute (Tyndall, 'On the History of Calorescence', Phil. Mag. 29, 1865, 218-31; Sabine and Armstrong letters). Tait (1868) credits Akin with "Calcescence or Calorescence".
• James Croll's parallel thinking on "negative fluorescence" (letter 2214, Jan 1865; three short Phil. Mag. articles 1866). Claim 4.
• Eunice Foote (1856, Am. J. Sci.) and R. Franz (1855, Ann. Phys. 94) on absorption by gases before Tyndall (Jackson 2019). Claims 1-2, priority.
• Rontgen 1881 and Graham Bell 1880: photoacoustic detection of gas absorption, now the basis of photoacoustic trace-gas spectroscopy (Manohar 2016; Harren 2019). Claim 5 (molecular absorption), and a modern, testable descendant of the method.
• Blair D. Macdonald, viXra:1504.0165 (2015): argues thermopile detection misreads Tyndall's experiment and that N2 and O2 also absorb; unrefereed, recorded as the author's claim. Claim 1.
• Edwin Babbitt, Principles of Light and Color (1878): takes up Tyndall's "Calorescence" in an alternative-science colour theory. Claim 4, influence.

4. The historical record

• Tyndall-Magnus dispute 1861-1866, reaching Geneva (Soret, 1863) and continuing through Buff and Lecher-Pernter to 1881; Rontgen (1884) still calls the question open among physicists. The record does not go silent; it moves to new methods (photoacoustic, spectrobolometric). Claim 2.
• Akin (born Kohn, 1830-1893): honorary member of the Athenaeum 1864; after the dispute he left physics, entered Hungarian academic and political life (Academy member 1868), and died in poverty. His physics record stops after 1865. Competing explanations for that silence: the dispute and its outcome (Sabine, Armstrong and the RS establishment sided with Tyndall); a move to other interests; lack of a laboratory post. Records that would decide: his BA Report 1863 paper, his letters in Epsilon vols 8-9 introductions, Hungarian Academy archive. Claim 4.
• Forbes-Tyndall glacier dispute (SHI 2025): Forbes held viscosity and regelation complementary; Tyndall's public attacks; Forbes's 1864 letter. Claim 7.
• Surviving apparatus at the RI (tube 698 x 85 mm, dated 1861), RI MS JT/2/13/1158 journal entry of 18 May 1859. Claims 1-2.

Corrections to earlier documents

• None to the review files. The Wikisource validated text of On Radiation independently confirms the deep reader's corrections already listed in claims.md (1590, 6030, 372).
• claims.md and the Heat deep read give Strachey's series as March 1850; Tyndall's 1882 Phil. Trans. paper describes Strachey's Phil. Mag. July 1866 paper as Madras data for 1841-1844. Both may be in Strachey's paper; a reviewer should check Phil. Mag. July 1866 before treating the dates as a discrepancy.