Lord Kelvin's early home : being the recollections of his sister the late Mrs. Elizabeth King / together with some family letters and a supplementary chapter by the editor, Elizabeth Thomson King ; with illustrations from Mrs. King's own drawings and those of her daughters.

  • King, Elizabeth, 1818-1896.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lord Kelvin's early home : being the recollections of his sister the late Mrs. Elizabeth King / together with some family letters and a supplementary chapter by the editor, Elizabeth Thomson King ; with illustrations from Mrs. King's own drawings and those of her daughters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    163/316 (page 129)
    129 he is getting on very well with his Latin, and he has commenced mathematics with Elizabeth. Papa is very much pleased with the progress he has been making.”] The next summer (1836) we spent at Kirn, near Dunoon, and there, while watching the steamers as they passed, James observed the great loss of force caused by the manner in which the paddles struck the water, and rose again carrying an immense weight of water with them. To obviate this loss he invented a wheel, with paddles so adjusted as to dip perpendicularly into the water, strike directly backwards, and rise without encumbrance. He made a perfect little model of his inven- tion, and our father took him up to Glasgow to show it to practical men qualified to judge of its utility. It proved to be completely satisfactory in every respect ; but something to serve the same purpose had been invented and a patent taken out for it only a few weeks before. James was fourteen at this time. Our father was much interested in parallel scratchings which he observed on the rocks about Kirn, and he explained to us his belief that they were caused by the friction of I