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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
DISCUSSING PERPETUAL MOTION AND HIS FAILURE TO CREDIT DISCOVERER OF RADIATION (SCIENTISTS.) KELVIN, WILLIAM THOMPSON; BARON. Autograph Letter Signed, "Kelvin," to Henri Becquerel, with a small ink drawing. The letter, thanking him for photographs showing "phosphorescence-rays," explaining that he thought it unnecessary to credit him in a recent article since everyone knows who discovered the phenomena [Becquerel is not mentioned in the article by Kelvin, Beattie and Smolan, "Experiments on the Electrical Phenomena produced in Gases by Röntgen Rays, by Ultra Violet Light, and by Uranium" in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 21, (1897): 393-428], discussing similarities between Becquerel's work with "phosphorescence-rays" and some experiments Kelvin described in a recent lecture demonstrating a "quasi-perpetual motion" machine, and reporting that he is bound for New York with his wife aboard the Campania. The drawing, a diagram illustrating his "quasi-perpetual motion" machine, at upper edge of fourth page, 1x3½ inches. 7¾ pages, 8vo, written on two folded sheets, "Netherhall" stationery with address struck out in ink; faint scattered offsetting, horizontal fold. With the original envelope. Liverpool, 7 August 1897
". . . The specimens of photographic work done by your wonderful phosphorescence-rays, after passage through aluminum, which you kinldy send me are most interesting . . . . It will be a great pleasure to me to show them . . . at Toronto, and . . . I . . . look forward to soon seeing a published paper describing your results. I am afraid [Carruthers] Beattie and [Smoluchowski de] Smolan, and myself with them, are to blame for not having given references to your paper sufficiently for some readers who may possibly not know, so thoroughly as we have known all along, that the discovery of the 'uranium rays,' and of their electric properties, and of the transparency of aluminum for them and for some phosphorescence rays, is wholly yours. . . . [A]ll scientific people in this country look to you and your father, and your grandfather, as the main source of 19th century knowledge in this subject . . . . "In a lecture on Contact-Electricity of Metals, which I gave before the Royal Institution in London last May . . . I called attention to a 'quasi-Perpetual Motion' by uranium rays which I showed in a very simple experiment. A piece of uranium . . . is placed [diagram] between polished plates of zinc and copper connected by thin copper wires with the terminals of a quadrant electrometer E [in diagram]. . . . [T]he experiment proves that there is a continuous current of electricity through the wires C C' [in diagram], as long as metallic contact is maintained at M. This current generates heat continually (? for years; ? forever ?) in the wires! What is the source of energy drawn on for this emission of heat? I forbear to conjecture. . . ." In 1903, Henri Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Pierre and Marie Curie for "joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
