The best part of his education he got from his father, not in class-hours, but in the daily intercourse of their home life. This went on for many a year after he left off receiving from him regular instruction. “His children were,” Rowland wrote, “though in an irregular and desultory manner, his private pupils, and as a private teacher he was very successful.”[25]
In the year 1807 his father gave a series of lectures on electricity, mechanics, astronomy, pneumatics, and the gases.
“These lectures, to which I paid a fixed attention, gave me a new impulse. I resolved to make an electrical machine for myself, and speedily went to work. The cylinder (plate-glass machines were yet unknown) I got blown at a glass-house in the town, paying for it the sum of sixteen shillings. Of course, to a child, there was much difficulty at almost every step, but my hardest task was to make a pattern for the caps. My first attempt was sufficiently primitive, viz., to cut one out from a large turnip. Not succeeding in this, I resorted to casting. Lead was the metal I naturally chose, as most easily melted; and having, after many attempts, at length succeeded in bringing my sand into due shape, I emptied my ladle into the mould and brought out my pattern cap, which, when duly smoothened in the lathe of a friendly workman in the neighbourhood, I bore, with no small pride and satisfaction, to the founder’s, that it might be cast in brass. One serious difficulty in construction I avoided by carrying the axle, which was a strong iron rod, right through the cylinder, instead of attempting to break it off, as usual, just within the caps. The prime conductor, too, I did not attempt to make hollow, but satisfied myself with bringing a piece of wood into the proper cylindrical shape, and then covering it over, first with paper, and afterwards with tinfoil.
“While the work was in progress I was attacked with illness, and for a time was confined to the house. It was during this period that the new caps, in all their first brightness, arrived from the brass-founder’s; and as soon as I was a little better I was of course eager to attach them to the cylinder; but the workshop being too cold for an invalid, my patience would have been sorely tried had not my indulgent mother made provision for me in the parlour, by substituting for the hearthrug an old carpet folded in several doubles, so as to prevent the droppings from my ladle from injuring the somewhat better carpet on the floor; and here, the cement being melted over a good fire, the cylinder was duly prepared for mounting.
“My simple apparatus was completed in about a year and a-half. I set it to work with no small trepidation, having heard much about the uncertainty of electrical action, and fearing lest my limited means and powers might have left some fatal defect. So great was my uncertainty, that even after giving the machine three or four turns, I still hesitated to apply the decisive test, and great indeed were my pride and joy when my knuckle drew from the conductor its first spark.[26] Downstairs I rushed in quest of sympathy, nor could I be satisfied until my father and many others had witnessed the performance with admiring eyes. A few years afterwards I added some improvements, substituting for the deal frame one of mahogany, procuring a hollow conductor from the tinman’s, made of course according to my own directions, and giving also greater neatness and efficiency to the subordinate parts of the machine and its various adjuncts; and I may add the apparatus, though in a somewhat imperfect state, is still extant. Meanwhile, however, a friend of my father’s, the late Mr. Michael Beasley, a schoolmaster of Stourbridge, who through life showed great affection for me, and to whom I owe much in various ways, having seen the machine in its first simple state, engaged me to make a duplicate for himself, though on a smaller scale. This I accomplished in about six months; and while my outlay amounted to two pounds, I received in payment, for materials and workmanship, the sum of three guineas, which I considered a handsome remuneration, though I have now no doubt that my kind friend would have given me yet more had his means been less restricted.”[27]
It was from his father, that his son got his strong love for astronomy, and acquired, as he said, even while a boy, no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject. A few years before his death, he drew up an interesting paper on his astronomical studies.[28]
In it he says:—
“My father (like myself in youth and early manhood) was a great walker, and we frequently journeyed together. When I was only nine years of age I walked with him, for the most part after dark, from Birmingham to Stourbridge, a distance of twelve miles—with occasional lifts no doubt—according to usage—on his back. I recollect that it was a brilliant starlight night, and the names of the constellations, and of the brighter single stars, their apparent motions, and the distinction between the so-called fixed stars and planets, formed then, as on many similar occasions, never-failing subjects of interesting conversation, and to me of instruction. On the way we passed by the side of a small pool, and the air being still, the surface of the water gave a perfect reflection of the stars. I have a vivid recollection, after an interval of nearly seventy years, of the fear with which I looked into what appeared to me a vast abyss, and of my clinging to my father, to protect me from falling into it.”
His father had a reflecting telescope that showed Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings, a Hadley’s quadrant, an artificial horizon, and a tolerably good clock. He took in, moreover, the “Nautical Almanac.” “By means of this simple apparatus,” wrote his son, “he not only regulated the clock, but determined the latitude, and even the longitude of our house, or rather of the playground. In these occupations I was always his assistant.” No sooner had Rowland learnt anything than he set about teaching it. In fact, as he himself stated, learning and teaching with him generally went on hand in hand. He gave lectures on astronomy to the boys of the school, and later on to a Literary and Scientific Association, of which he was one of the founders. “With a view to these lectures, I read all the contributions of Sir William Herschel to the transactions of the Royal Society. My reverence for the man led me to contrive, on the occasion of my second visit to London, to go round by Slough, in order that I might obtain a glimpse—as the coach passed—of his great telescope, which I knew could be seen over the tops of the neighbouring buildings.” Astronomy was, indeed, as he always said, his favourite science. At an early date he became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. He kept up his interest in its proceedings till the close of his life. When he had passed the age of threescore years and ten, he discovered some important errors in the Address of one of the Presidents.[29]
All through life, whatever he read he read with an acuteness, a patience, and an earnest desire to arrive at the truth, that would have done honour to a judge.