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Galbraith’s Account of the Foucault Pendulum Experiment in Dublin

In 1851, Léon Foucault amazed the world by demonstrating the rotation of the earth using a simple pendulum. As the earth spins, the swing-plane of a pendulum turns around. Within a month or so, the experiment was repeated in Dublin by two Irish scientists, Joseph Galbraith and Samuel Haughton, both fellows of Trinity College and both members of the Royal Irish Academy.

Engraving in L’Illustration of Foucault’s pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris
Engraving in L’Illustration of Foucault’s pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris

Galbraith kept a diary, which is now in the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library (TCD MS 3826). The entries for the months April to July, 1851 give us a day-by-day account of the activities of Galbraith and Haughton. The first relevant entry is for 17 April, recording that the two scientists were in Ringsend with Wilfred Haughton, Samuel’s cousin. Wilfred was Chief Engineer of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway, and the engine factory beside Grand Canal Basin, with its lofty roof, was an ideal location for the experiments. The pendulum length was 35.4 feet or 10.8 metres.

Following preliminary testing, six experiments were carried out, each lasting between 15 and 30 hours. The azimuthal angle of the pendulum, that is, the angle between the swing-plane and a north-south line, was recorded every 20 minutes, requiring one of the team members to be present throughout each experiment. The precession of the pendulum occurs slowly, taking well over a day to complete a full circle.

TCD MS 3826 diary entry for 17 April 1851
TCD MS 3826 diary entry for 17 April 1851

There are about 25 diary entries relevant to the experiments. They detail who was present during various periods. In the final experiment, a full rotation was achieved in a time of 28 hours and 26 minutes. The theoretical period is 28 hours and 21 minutes, not far from the observed period. According to an article in the Philosophical Magazine, “Messrs Galbraith and Haughton have pursued their research with all imaginable precautions”. Their impressive results confirm this assessment.

A full account of the experiments appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 116C, pages 1-15. Appendix A of this report contains a list of all the relevant entries from Galbraith’s diary. A copy of the report is available online.

Peter Lynch, School of Mathematics and Statistics, UCD

References

  • Lynch, Peter, 2016: Replication of Foucault’s pendulum experiment in Dublin. Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 116C, 1-15. doi:10.3318/PRIAC.2016.116.03. (PDF: http://mathsci.ucd.ie/~plynch/Publications/PRIAC.pdf)
  • Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College Dublin, TCD MS 3826, Diary of Joseph Galbraith for April and May 1851.

 

 

Enduring Everest

TCD MS 10484/4/4
TCD MS 10484/4/4

In the aftermath of the First World War, many seasoned soldiers turned to a life of adventure, seeking out new adrenalin-fuelled challenges to replace the heroics of the battlefield, or to suppress the memory of its atrocities, or both. The conquest of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, became an attractive objective, and three attempts were made in the early 1920s by British mountaineering teams. These included the Irishmen Charles Howard Bury (the 1921 ‘Reconnaissance’ Expedition) and Richard William George Hingston (1924). Both had served with distinction in the war (Howard Bury in France, Hingston in the Middle East), and their war diaries form part of the Library’s First World War resource, ‘Fit as fiddles and as hard as nails’.

10484/4/11 members of the 1924 expedition, Hingston is standing second from left
10484/4/11 members of the 1924 expedition, Hingston is standing second from left

The 1924 expedition, which Hingston joined as a medical officer and naturalist, is famous for resulting in Everest’s greatest mystery: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine broke off from the group to make a final attempt on the summit on 8 June 1924, and were spotted near to the summit only to then disappear into the cloud cover, never to return. Mallory’s body was only recovered in 1999 at 26,755 ft (8,155 m) – what caused their deaths, or whether they actually made it to the summit remains a matter of conjecture, despite the fact that this attempt was the best documented of its time.

TCD MS 10484/4/1 member of the climbing team with oxygen tanks
TCD MS 10484/4/1 member of the climbing team with oxygen tanks

The official photographer, John Noel, devoted himself to recording a filmed record of the expedition. The result, The Epic of Everest, is one of the most remarkable pieces of documentary film-making of the early 20th century. With Noel preoccupied with filming (as well as the logistical nightmare of transporting bulky equipment up the slopes alongside its own team of mules and porters), the remainder of the group dutifully compiled still photographs with their ‘tourist variety’ cameras. Their published report, The Fight for Everest, details the travails of the Himalayan photographer: the tendency to ‘under-expose in tropical Sikkim and over-expose in arctic Tibet’; the unwelcome effects of the lack of oxygen on development times and their ingenious solution to the problem of drying negatives in sub-zero conditions:

10484/4/15 Everest Base Camp
10484/4/15 Everest Base Camp

‘We threaded as many as 50-60 [negatives] on cotton as soon as they were washed and suspended them in rows in the apex of Noel’s double-walled tent. Then we brought in great glowing trays of smouldering Yak dung and set those on the floor so that the heat might rise and circulate about the films and prevent them from freezing … Noel complained that he had to sleep in the tent; we complained that he was the only man to have a fire in his bedroom.’

TCD MS 10484/4/2
TCD MS 10484/4/2

Given such challenges, it is remarkable that so many enduring images made it back, including those taken by Hingston and now housed in M&ARL. Hingston not only took images of his fellow mountaineers, sherpas, and the region itself, but also birds and insects as part of his work as a naturalist. M&ARL also holds Hingston’s annotated maps of the area, correspondence with colleagues at Camp II, and letters he sent to the Natural History Museum on his return. These include taxonomical lists of the specimens he collected, including a species of Black Attid spider. He discovered this creature living at 22,000 feet – the highest known habitat for any animal.

TCD MS 10473 f 36 recto Hingston's journal for 7 to 10 June 1924 describing the tragic summit attempt
TCD MS 10473 f 36 recto Hingston’s journal for 7-10 June 1924 describing the tragic summit attempt

One of the most emotive items in the collection is the notebook Hingston took with him to record the expedition, TCD MS 10473, which was then worked up into a more legible copy, TCD MS 10474. With echoes of the diary of Scott of the Antarctic, this is both a record-keeping exercise and a personal notebook, with each entry written in pencil commencing with location and height in feet, but betraying little of the extreme conditions. A single page 36 recto, datable to 8 June, describes the final ascent by Mallory and Irvine: ‘eyes glued to the mountain. There is just a chance of Mallory and Irvine getting to the summit’, but finishes sombrely on 10 June, ‘there can be no doubt; the worst has happened.’

A full list of the Hingston papers is available on the Manuscripts and Archives online catalogue. The Hingston papers were fully digitised in 2010 as part of the EuropeanaTravel project funded under European Commission’s eContentplus programme, and are available via the Library’s Digital Collections site.

Estelle Gittins

Images from the Collen Archive

MS11482-4-2-36_01As the Collen Archive Project enters its final stages a small exhibition highlighting Collen’s contribution to Ireland’s built environment has gone on display in the Long Room and online. This coincides with National Heritage Week, 22-30 August 2015, during which, Ireland’s industrial and design heritage will be celebrated at events across the country.

MS11482-4-1-1_10r croppedThe photographic exhibition outlines Collen’s evolution, from its origins in 1810 at Tandragee, County Armagh, to the opening of a Dublin branch in 1872, and its separation into two branches in 1949. It explores how the brothers Standish and Lyal Collen, both graduates of the School of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, combined experience and innovation to develop and expand the new company, Collen Brothers (Dublin) Limited, during the late 20th century.MS11482-4-1-12_9

Photography, by professionals and amateurs, both during and after the completion of construction projects, was a regular feature of Collen’s activities; it provided a visual record as well as a resource to support marketing activities. For researchers and the general community, the thousands of photographs in the Collen Archive provide a connection between the past and the present; they record details about aspects of Ireland’s development and the built environment which complement information captured by the official written records.

Claire Allen

Space Exploration

TCD MS 924 folio 142v
TCD MS 924 folio 142v

New ways of looking at the past produces new histories from unchanging artefacts. In the last decades many historians have abandoned the search for a ‘grand narrative’ of history, which proceeds like a good novel from first causes to a satisfactory conclusion, all ends neatly tied up; they now approach things in a more circuitous route.

Consider for a moment the concept of ‘space’, which is used by scholars of many research strands to understand how historical peoples experienced their worlds. What spaces did children inhabit, for example? How important to house-bound women is the space on both sides of their front door?

Space is the theme of a conference this weekend to mark the bimillenium of the death of Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, who died in AD14. Recent work in Latin literature, social history and material culture has explored Roman constructions of space and place from a variety of angles, from the conceptualisation of Rome as cosmopolis to shifts in the boundary between public and private spheres; from the relationship between physical monuments and literary texts, to the psychogeographies that structure personal and collective experience.

Anna Chahoud, Professor of Latin, has chosen some images from the Library’s 15th-century manuscripts to illustrate the theme. One (TCD MS 929) is a version of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the poet talks about the future site of Rome. In the other (TCD MS 1759), the poet Horace refers to well-known monuments in the Roman Forum which were closely associated with Roman republican history.

TCD MS 1759 folio 47r
TCD MS 1759 folio 47r

The conference is hosted by the Department of Classics; it will be in the Long Room Hub and all are welcome.

http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/research/projects-networks/augustan-space/

Jane Maxwell

Forthcoming Lectures

Brian Boru Exhibition ImagingThe next month sees an abundance of public lectures around Dublin which use Trinity College Library’s manuscripts collection as source material. The diversity of the lectures reflects the breadth of research interest in our material. From 17th– century Puritanism to 1950s healthcare, via 20th– century composers, Viking invaders and a certain famous harp, there should be something for everyone.

19 March, Dr Polly Ha, (UEA and TLRH Fellow); Recovering the Birth of Independency at Trinity College Library: Puritanism and Liberty in the 17th Century, Trinity College Long Room Hub, 6.15pm.

20 March 2014, Dr Mark Fitzgerald (DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama); 20th -Century Irish Composers, Trinity College Long Room Hub, 6.00pm. Part of the lecture series associated with the In Tune exhibition of music in the Old Library.

3 April, Dr Robbie Roulston, (UCD); The Most Priceless Possession of Protestants in this Country: The Adelaide Hospital and Upholding Protestant Healthcare in Ireland 1950-1972, CHOMI seminar series, Room K114 School of History and Archives UCD, 5.00pm.

11 and 12 April, National Conference on Clontarf 1014-2014 at Trinity College Dublin. Including a talk by Denis Casey on Brian, Armagh and the Irish Church. Dr Casey was the researcher for the soon-to-be launched Brian Boru exhibition in the Old Library.

15 April, Moira Laffan; William Lecky, the Historian.  Also a short talk by Dr Sean Duffy convenor of the National Conference on Clontarf 1014-2014, Foxrock Local History Club, Parish Centre, 8.00pm. Adm €4.

29 April 2014, Janet Harbision, (Irish Harp Centre and Irish Harp College, Limerick); The Brian Boru Harp and its Musical Legacy, Dublin City Hall Lunch Time Lectures, Council Chambers, Dublin City Hall, 1.10-1.50pm. This talk is part of a wider series of lectures entitled Commemorating Clontarf: the battle and its legacy.

Discover more about M&ARL’s collections via our online catalogue.

Estelle Gittins