Autograph Letter Signed, 8vo, on blind embossed address stationery,3pp, Mariemont Edgbaston, England, March 4, 1919.
LODGE, OLIVER, SIR (1851-1940) English physicist and writer involved in the development of the wireless telegraph. Lodge, in his Royal Institution lectures, "The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors", coined the term "coherer". He gained the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent from the United States Patent Office in 1898.
He writes to the Literary Editor of the "Daily Mail" of London, a well-known newspaper. "Dear Sir, I am under contract to supply an article (a) to Cassells (b) to an American magazine, both having offered very substantial terms, and I cannot at present find time to do either of them. I am also rather doubtful about the policy of general propaganda in psychical subjects. Hence on the whole I do not see my way to fall in with your request for an article, at any rate not at present. By the way, I think I ought to tell you that last Friday morning somebody telephoned from London, ostensibly from your office, asking questions about psychic matters and about my resignation. Thinking the man was from 'The Daily Mail,' I consented to see him at the Euston Hotel, and there gave him half an hour or so of time. It did not occur to me that he might be connected with other papers, and not with "The Daily Mail" at all, and I did not take his name. But I have seen fragments of what I said scattered about in inferior organs, and I have not seen anything in "The Daily Mail" itself; hence I think the man must have been an imposter. It was perhaps unwise of me to break my usual rule and give him an interview at all." He signs "Yours faithfully, Oliver Lodge." (Item ID: 1211)
$250.00
An attractive letter, and revealing of the scientist's personal thoughts.
