Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from John Canton, [1766]

From John Canton

AL: American Philosophical Society

[1766]7

Mr. Canton presents his Compliments to Dr. Franklin and begs to be inform’d whether, or not, in Writing to Dr. Priestley, he has mention’d Mr. C’s wanting Æpinus’s Tentamen Theoria Electricitatis et Magnetismi8 for Mr. Cavendish;9 if not, Mr. C would beg the Favour of a Frank.

Addressed: To / Doctor Franklin

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

7So dated by the reference to the book by Aepinus, which BF had sent Priestley in April, to assist in his preparation of his History of Electricity; see above, p. 246.

8For this book, in which Aepinus tried to use BF’s electrical theories to explain the phenomenon of magnetism, see above, X, 204.

9Canton apparently means Henry Cavendish, not his father Charles; see above, X, 41 n. Henry developed Aepinus’ theory at length in a paper, “An Attempt to explain some of the principal Phenomena of Electricity, by Means of an Elastic Fluid,” published in Phil. Trans., lxi (1771), 584–677.

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