On November 24 Mr. Dalton wrote to Mr. Savage, the clerk:
Respected Friend,—As it will not be convenient to me to be in town before the 17th or 18th of next month, I should be glad to know previously whether my accommodation as to board and lodging would be in the Institution; if not, whether you know of any place in the vicinity where the same would probably be procured. It will be necessary for me to spend a considerable portion of time to make myself acquainted with the structure and use of some of the apparatus, and therefore I am the more solicitous on the above heads. Pray, what is the usual duration of a lecture—one or two hours? An immediate reply to these inquiries will much oblige,
Yours respectfully,
J. Dalton.
Apartments were ordered by the managers to be prepared in the house for Mr. Dalton before December 17.
On Monday, December 22, at two, he gave the introduction to a course of four lectures on Mechanics and Physics. In this lecture he dwelt on the objects of natural philosophy, division of the science, utility of the study, plan of the lectures. The second lecture was on Monday, 26, at eight P.M., on the Properties of Matter; extension, impenetrability, divisibility, inertia, various species of attraction and repulsion, motion, forces, composition of forces, collision, pendulums. The third lecture was on Wednesday, 28, at two. Projectiles; resistance of the air, mechanic powers, strength of timber. The fourth on Thursday, at two. Pneumatics; nature of electric fluids, the atmosphere, air-pump, spring and weight of the air proved by experiments, barometer. The last lecture was given on Saturday, 31, at eight. This was followed by other courses, making altogether twenty lectures.
After his return to Manchester Dalton wrote to his brother, February 1, 1804:
Dear Brother,—I have the satisfaction to inform thee that I returned safe from my London journey last seventh day, having been absent six weeks. It has on many accounts been an interesting vocation to me, though a very laborious one. I went in a great measure unprepared, not knowing the nature and manner of the lectures at the Institution nor the apparatus. My first was on Thursday, December 22, which was introductory, being entirely written, giving an account of what was intended to be done; and on natural philosophy in general. All lectures were to be one hour each, or as nearly as might be. The number attending were from one to three hundred of both sexes, usually more than half men. I was agreeably disappointed to find so learned and attentive an audience, though many of them of rank. It required great labour on my part to get acquainted with the apparatus and to draw up the order of experiments and repeat them in the intervals between the lectures, though I had one pretty expert to assist me. We had the good fortune, however, never to fail in any experiment, though I was once so ill prepared as to beg the indulgence of the audience as to part of the lecture, which they most handsomely and immediately granted me by a general plaudit. The scientific part of the audience was wonderfully taken with some of my original notions relative to heat, the gases &c., some of which had not before been published. Had my hearers been generally of the description I had apprehended, the most interesting lectures I had to give would have been the least relished; but, as it happened, the expectation formed had drawn several gentlemen of first-rate talents together, and my eighteenth, on Heat and the Laws of Expansion, &c., was received with the greatest applause; with very few experiments. The one that followed was on Mixed Elastic Fluids, in which I had an opportunity of developing my ideas, that have already been published on the subject, more fully. The doctrine has, as I apprehended it would, excited the attention of philosophers throughout Europe. Two journals in the German language came into the Royal Institution whilst I was there from Saxony, both of which were about half filled with translations from the papers I have written on this subject and comments upon them.
Dr. Ainslie was occasionally one of my audience, and his sons constantly. He came up at the concluding lecture, expressed his high satisfaction, and he believed it was the same sentiment with all or most of the audience.
I saw my successor, William Allen, fairly launched. He gave his first lecture on Tuesday, preceding my conclusion. I was an auditor in this case—the first time—and had an opportunity of surveying the audience. Amongst others of distinction the Bishop of Durham was present. In lecturing on optics I got six ribbands—blue, pink, lilac, red, green, and brown—which matched very well, and told the various audience so. I do not know whether they generally believed me to be serious, but one gentlemen came up immediately after and told me he perfectly agreed with me. He had not remarked the difference by candle light.
Throughout the year 1803 scarcely a trace of Count Rumford’s name can be found in the records of the Institution. On January 24, when writing from Munich to the clerk, Mr. Savage, about his house in Brompton Row, he only begs his compliments to Dr. Young and to Mr. Davy, and on November 11, the clerk having asked him about an account relating to the Institution, he wrote from Paris:
I assure you that I have not the smallest recollection of having received from Mr. Hunter, the solicitor of the Institution, the account you mention in your letter of the 7th ult.; and had I in fact received it, I should most undoubtedly have laid it before the managers of the Institution. I can imagine no reason which could have induced me to keep it back; and, as all the affairs of the Institution in my hands were kept with the utmost care and regularity, as you can testify, it is not likely that I should have mislaid and forgotten it. This is all I can say on the subject, and I hope and trust that this declaration will be satisfactory to the managers of the Royal Institution and to Mr. Hunter.
I expect to be in England in the course of the winter.
Gradually the ‘usefulness of science to the poorer classes and to the common purposes of life’ ceased to be the prime object of the Institution. The school for mechanics, the workshops, and the models, the kitchens and the Journals, died away; and the laboratory, the lectures, and the library became the life of the new Institution, and its object became ‘the diffusion of knowledge and the application of science to the improvement of arts and manufactures.’
The most memorable scientific incident in the history of the Rumford Institution was its relationship with Dr. Thomas Young. His lectures on physics must even now be held to rank as the greatest work in the literature of the Institution. As Professor and Superintendent of the House he had no great success; and he had no great influence on its fortunes; but by his genius he anticipated the progress of science, and his reputation has risen until it now ranks with that of Davy and Faraday.