London: C. J. CLAY AND SON, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. Cambridge: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL PAPERS BY SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., - PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, AND FELLOW OF ST PETER'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. COLLECTED FROM DIFFERENT SCIENTIFIC PERIODICALS FROM VOLUME II. Cambridge: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1884 [All Rights reserved.] PREFACE. THIS second volume contains the Reprint of my papers on Mathematical and Physical subjects, including the titles of all published from April 1853 to February 1856, and the text of all of them, except those which are to be found in my volume of collected papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism. I have thought it advisable to bring into one series, in Articles LXXII. to LXXXV., nearly all that I had written on the subject of Electric Telegraphs during the period, May 1855 till December 1865: a period of the greatest importance in the history and development of Submarine Telegraphy; as including within it the earliest, and the finally successful, efforts to establish telegraphic communication between Europe and America. The series concludes with a short paper of date March 1873, describing the siphon recorder, which is the instrument at present chiefly used in doing the work of the great submarine cables. T. II. b |