The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett
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THE LIFE OF JAMES CLERK MAXWELL WITH A SELECTION FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE AND OCCASIONAL WRITINGS AND A SKETCH OF HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE BY LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS AND WILLIAM GARNETT, M.A. LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM WITH THREE STEEL PORTRAITS, COLOURED PLATES, ETC. London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1882 ii © copyright 1997 Sonnet Software, Inc., all rights reserved. And SO thou wast made perfect! Not a friend Might step between thee and the sore distress Which thou with strong and patient godliness Enduredst uncomplaining to the end. Heroic saint! Bright sufferer! Thou dost lend To science a new glory. Midst the press Of boasters, all thy meek-eyed fame confess, And worldlings thine unworldliness commend. Shine on, pure spirit! Though we see thee not, Even in thy passage thou hast purged away The fogs of earth-born doubt and sense-bound thought From hearts that followed thine all-piercing ray. And while thou soarest far from human view, Even thy faint image shall our strength renew. iii © copyright 1997 Sonnet Software, Inc., all rights reserved. PREFACE TO THE 1997 DIGITAL PRESERVATION (Second Edition, 1999) Friday the thirteenth of December 1996 was a lucky day. Daylight, such as it was, found me traveling south from Syracuse on Route 81 in a cold windy rain. I was going to visit an old friend from Cornell, L. Pearce Williams, Professor Emeritus, History of Science and Technology, Cornell University. I had spent the previous several weeks searching library catalogs on the Internet for a copy of The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett. This book was first published in 1882 by MacMillan and Co. in London. Initially, my primary interest was to obtain non-copyrighted images of James Maxwell to use in promoting software. Before actually contacting any of the libraries which had the book, I decided to give Pearce a call and he promptly volunteered his personal copy. When I arrived at Pearce's home, the rain had nearly stopped. After making friends with Pearce's two large dogs, he gave me a tour of one awesome personal library. He was busy, so our visit was brief. On the way home, I started thinking (always a dangerous thing to do!), if it took this much trouble to find this 100 year old biography today, how much trouble is it going to be, say, another hundred years from now? A classic business phrase flashed in my mind, "Window of opportunity," then I looked at the book again. Now that I have the book, why not scan the whole thing into the computer? Why not? Well, for one thing, it is well over 600 pages long. For another, I have a company to run. For a third, I have a family that needs attention. But then again, right now, I also have a window of opportunity to preserve this treasure for future generations. Even now, only a precious few people can get access to this book. A hundred years from now, the pages will be next to dust. It is now, or perhaps, never. So, on the way home, I bought a scanner and an extra 2 GByte hard drive. The scanner came with software which seemed made to order for my task. I started scanning the book the same day. I finished scanning on December 27. Then I started converting the scans into text with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. Average scan time (including page straightening and cleaning) was three minutes per page. Average OCR time (including correcting OCR errors, given the quality of the 114 year old print) was about 10 minutes per page. I completed the OCR and proofing late in January of 1997. Later, after another visit to Prof. Williams, I scanned some additional material from the second edition (1884) which is not present in the first edition. All was finished by the end of February. The CD-ROM has this book in several forms, each in a separate directory: 1) “acrobat”: Use Adobe Acrobat to view the biography. The entire biography is in all.doc. Alternatively, you may view one section at a time, start with pref_TOC.doc. 2) "html". The entire document in html format, suitable for a web browser. If you are using Microsoft Windows, just double click on the file "bio_home.html" in the html directory. Both text based and bitmapped images of each page can be viewed. 3) "msword": Use Microsoft Word 97 (earlier releases might work, but have not been tested) to view the biography. The entire biography is in all.doc. Alternatively, you may view one section at a time, start with pref_TOC.doc. 4) "paperport": Images of the original pages in PaperPort format, use the public domain iv © copyright 1997 Sonnet Software, Inc., all rights reserved. viewer, also in that directory, to view these files. There is one file per chapter. The full release of PaperPort can be obtained from Visioneer, Inc., (800) 787-7007, http://www.visioneer.com. 5) "tif": The original tif files, one sub-directory for each chapter with one LZW compressed file per page. The pages were scanned at 600 dpi for text and 150 dpi for images. 6) "sonnet": Includes numerous technical papers published by Sonnet and marketing information, which has effectively funded this work. The original page numbers are included in all word processor files in square brackets where each page starts. For example, [435] would mean that page 435 in the original book started just before the word “would” in this sentence. To find the tif file for page 435, go to the appropriate chapter sub-directory in the "tif" directory and find the file "435.tif". If you cite page numbers, please cite the page numbers of the original book. Since the word processor files are easily reformatted, the present page numbers should be considered variable. Note that pages i, iv, vi, 464, 576, and 652 are blank and are not included in the tif files. Page 613 is stored in file "613.tif", even though it is incorrectly labeled as page 631 in the original book. In addition, the index and some promotional material at the end of the book is not included in the word processor files. View the PaperPort or tif files to see this material. All word processor files require “Times New Roman” and “Symbol” fonts. No other fonts are used. If your system does not have the “Symbol” font, the only thing you will miss are a few Greek letters. Equations are represented within these fonts where possible, otherwise bitmaps are used. A few diacritical marks are not present in these fonts and were left out of the word processor files. Marginal notations (usually indicating Maxwell's age) are also left out of the word processor files. The pages are formatted for 8.5" x 11". Font size is 12 points for regular text, and 10 points for quoted material. The pages are easily reformatted in many word processors. In preparing the tif files, it was necessary to clean each page. In removing the digitization “dirt”, I also removed a few printing imperfections and an occasional misplaced period. It was difficult to differentiate between small ink spots and digital dirt in the artwork, so artwork may be a bit “cleaner” than the original. As I am not trained as a historian, I can not competently preface this work with a detailed historical commentary. However, I shall make several observations for the benefit of the uninitiated reader. First, the biography concentrates on Maxwell as a person, especially in his youth. Part II does cover his scientific achievements, however, the technical detail is limited. In particular, while his work on electromagnetics was recognized as important, it's ultimate impact was not yet realized. Maxwell's mechanical model for electromagnetics is described in detail, even though Maxwell appears to have abandoned it in his later years, leaving purely abstract mathematics to describe physical phenomena. Also keep in mind that Mrs. Maxwell was still living when this book was published. Several historians have suggested that the infrequent mention of her may be due to Campbell’s desire to refrain from all but positive references. This biography is a primary historical reference on Maxwell. In the course of this work, it occurred to me that what I am doing does not yet have a name. After considering several possibilities, I settled on “digital preservation”. If you are reading this digital preservation and enjoying the fruits of my “labour” someday, long after I, the book, and all my friends at Cornell have long since turned to dust and been forgotten, I would consider my v © copyright 1997 Sonnet Software, Inc., all rights reserved. quest successful. Please enjoy. JAMES C. RAUTIO. Phoenix, NY March 6, 1997 License To Copy This is a derivative work of a book which is in the public domain. As a derivative work, we have chosen to protect it by means of copyright. However, we also wish to see this material widely distributed. Therefore, we grant each interested party a license to copy this work, provided that: 1) The Sonnet copyright statement is included, and 2) The copy is not sold for more than the cost of reproduction, and 3) This license to copy is included. If only a small portion of this work is to be quoted in a larger work, then the above conditions do not apply provided that the statement, “Reprinted by permission of Sonnet Software, Inc.” is included.