of very skilful hands experimenting or recording, are all that I
realize in reading his memorials." He appeared to have no eye for
beauty; he cared nothing for natural scenery, and his apparatus,
provided it were efficient, might be clumsy in appearance and of the
cheapest materials; but he was extremely particular about accuracy of
construction in all essential details. He reminds us of one of our
foremost men of science, who, when his attention was directed to the
beautiful lantern tower of a cathedral, behind which the full moon was
shining, remarked, "I see form and colour, but I don't know what you
mean by beauty."
The accounts of Cavendish's death differ to some extent in their
details, but otherwise are very similar. It appears that he requested
his servant, "as he had something particular to engage his thoughts,
and did not wish to be disturbed by any one," to leave him and not to
return until a certain hour. When the servant came back, at the time
appointed, he found his master dead. This was on February 24, 1810,
after an illness of only two or three days.
It is mainly on account of his researches in electricity that the
biography of Cavendish finds a place in this volume. These
investigations took place between the years 1760 and 1783, and, as
already stated, were all conducted in the stables attached to his
father's house in Marlborough Street. It was by these experiments that
electricity was first brought within the domain of measurement, and
many of the numerical results obtained far exceeded in accuracy those
of any other observer until the instruments of Sir W. Thomson rendered
many electrical measurements a comparatively easy matter. The near
agreement of Cavendish's results with those of the best modern
electricians has made them a perpetual monument to the genius of their
author. It was at the request of Sir W. Thomson, Mr. Charles
Tomlinson, and others, that Cavendish's electrical researches might be
given to the public, that the Duke of Devonshire, in 1874, entrusted
the manuscripts to the care of the late Professor Clerk Maxwell. They
had previously been in the hands of Sir William Snow Harris, who
reported upon them, but after his death, in 1867, the report could not
be found. The papers, with an introduction and a number of very
valuable notes by the editor, were published by the Cambridge
University Press, just before the death of Clerk Maxwell, in 1879. Sir
W. Thomson quotes the following illustration of the accuracy of
Cavendish's work:--"I find already that the capacity of a disc was
determined experimentally by Cavendish as 1/1.57 of that of a sphere
of the same radius. Now we have capacity of disc = (2/[pi])_a_ =
_a_/1.571!"
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