At the age of seven he began to show his natural taste for the works of nature, and his father gave him glowing accounts of the achievements of Newton as
“That sun of science, whose meridian ray
Kindled the gloom of nature into day.”
A good education was the only patrimony which his father could bestow upon him. He was therefore sent to the best school within reach, and remained at it till his nineteenth year. In his earlier schooldays he preferred physical to mental exercises, and thus became expert in running, swimming, climbing, and other sports. The branch of study in which he excelled was mathematics. Under the tuition of a good teacher in an Irish national school, he acquired a knowledge of elementary algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and conic sections. His favourite “arithmetic” was the treatise of Professor Thomson, the father of Sir William Thomson, who in later years became one of his most brilliant contemporaries. At the age of seventeen he showed exceptional facility in solving geometrical problems, and on his way home from school, in company with his teacher, he would work out demonstrations on the snow in winter. But even that accessory he became able to dispense with; for he could so clearly present the relations of space to his mind without the aid of diagrams, that he was able to draw mentally the lines illustrating the solution of complex problems and to preserve this mental image so distinctly that he could reason upon it as correctly as on the diagrams drawn upon paper required by ordinary students. When he came to solid geometry he was able by means of this power of mental representation to dispense with models, which to other students were indispensable.
His powers of reasoning were not confined to mathematics. In his youth he was accustomed to debate with his father the points of doctrine that divide the Protestant from the Roman Catholic Church, reasoning high “of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate.” Sometimes the son took the Protestant side and at other times the Romish side; and in either case he showed much dialectical skill and theological knowledge. He also took more than ordinary interest in the study of English grammar, which he has described as being to his youthful mind a discipline of the highest value and a source of unfailing delight.
Leaving school in April, 1839, he joined a division of the Ordnance Survey then stationed in that district, under the command of Lieut. Geo. Wynne, of the Royal Engineers, who afterwards became an intimate friend of his, and to whom he has frequently expressed his obligation for acts of kindness that promoted his welfare in after life. About that time a good deal of astonishment was publicly expressed at the mathematical powers of one of the many boys employed in calculations on the Ordnance Survey; his name was Alexander Gwin, a native of Derry, and it was reported that at the age of eight years he had got by rote the fractional logarithms from 1 to 1,000, which he could repeat in regular rotation, or otherwise. His rapidity and correctness in calculating trigonometrical distances, triangles, &c., were extraordinary: he could make a return, in acres, roods, and perches, in less than one minute of any quantity of land, on receiving the surveyor’s chained distances; a calculation which the greatest arithmetician would take nearly an hour to do, and would not be so sure of accuracy at the end of that time.
The intention of young Tyndall was to become a civil engineer, which then appeared a most attractive profession to him. As a preliminary qualification he determined to master all the operations of the surveyors. Draftsmen being the best paid, he worked as a draftsman, but applied himself so well to learning the whole business that he soon became able to do the work of the computor, the surveyor, and the trigonometrical observer. He then asked to be allowed to go on field-work, and his desire was granted. In 1841, while he was stationed at Cork, a circumstance occurred which may be described as the turning point in his career. He worked at mapping in company with a gentleman, who, assuming a paternal interest in him, one day, asked the young and promising surveyor how he employed his leisure hours. Dissatisfied with the account given, the gentleman said to him: “You have five hours a day at your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to study. Had I, when I was your age, had a friend to advise me as I now advise you, instead of being in my present subordinate position, I should be the equal of the director of the Survey.” Pregnant words! Next morning young Tyndall was at his books by five o’clock, and the studious habits then commenced he continued for twelve years.
Next year he was in Preston, and there becoming a member of the Preston Mechanics’ Institute he attended its lectures and made use of its library. One experiment which he saw there he never forgot. In a lecture on respiration, Surgeon Cortess showed the changes produced by the passage of air through the lungs, and in order to illustrate the fact that what went in as free oxygen came out in carbonic acid, he forced his breath through lime water in a flask by means of a glass tube dipped into it; the carbonic acid from the lungs converted the dissolved lime into carbonate of lime, which being practically insoluble was precipitated. All this, he says, was predicted beforehand by the lecturer, “but the delight with which I saw this prediction fulfilled by the conversion of the limpid lime-water into a turbid mixture of chalk and water remains with me as a memory to the present hour” (1884.)
His diligence in study he was soon able to turn to good account. On one occasion there was a dearth of men capable of making trigonometrical observations when such observations were required. Tyndall offered his services in that department; but the offer was not readily accepted. His superiors hesitated to intrust him with a theodolite on account of his inexperience in work of that description: and indeed there were bets made against his chances of success. However, being allowed to try his hand at it, he at once took his theodolite into an open field, where he examined all its parts, and studied their uses. He then made the trigonometrical observations prescribed to him, and when they were compared with the measurement previously made on a larger scale, his work was pronounced to have been successfully done. When he quitted the Ordnance Survey in 1843 he had practically mastered all its operations.
The pay upon the Ordnance Survey, however, was very small, but having ulterior objects in view, he considered the instruction received as some set-off to the smallness of the pay. In order to “prevent some young men from considering their fate specially hard, or from being daunted, because from a very low level they had to climb a very steep hill,” he has stated that on quitting the Ordnance Survey in 1843, his salary was a little under twenty shillings a week, adding, “I have often wondered since at the amount of genuine happiness which a young fellow, of regular habits, not caring for either pipe or mug, may extract even from pay like that.”