This mini-monograph is a kind of footnote to the earlier separate monographs on Franklin and Whitehurst. It arose because when Whitehurst’s executor, Dr Robert Willan FRS, reassembled the book on ventilation, chimneys and garden stoves which Whitehurst had inadvertently destroyed shortly before his death, he mentioned that he had discussed the subject with Franklin when he stayed with him at the Queen Street house in Derby in 1774. That two such Enlightenment figures should have been exercised about the problem of how to cure smoking chimneys may come as something of a surprise.
Franklin’s thoughts about the subject were eventually communicated in a letter to his friend Jan Ingenhousz written while he was at sea in 1785. This letter became quite celebrated when it was published, but Whitehurst’s wider-ranging treatise only became known when Dr Willan published it. This mini-monograph compares their two approaches committed to paper more than a decade after their original discussions.
This was not the first of their collaborations of course, and the mini-monograph with an exploration of the development of a three-wheel clock (to economise on expensive parts in the Colonies!) – initiated by Franklin and developed in different ways by Whitehurst, Ferguson, and others.
The final section of the mini-monograph concerns the final treatise Whitehurst sent to Franklin, about his proposal to establish a reliable and reproducible universal standard of length, by relating it to the measurement of time rooted in astronomical observations.
Published by Quandary Books in 2025 ISBN 978-1-913253-30-1
Pages: iii, 33; 44 b/w and colour illustrations