To Benjamin Franklin from Jacques Bianchi, 4 November 1781
From Jacques Bianchi8
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Ce 4 9bre 1781 Paris
Monsieur
Jai Cru mon devoir Vous invitèr, lorsque vous venè en ville, de me faire lhoneur, á venir voir mon petit Cabinet des experiences, que la basse et tiré de vos Savants ovrages, un indisposition m’a ampeché de venir moi meme. Je Comance demain a 6 heurs un Cours come vous veré du prospectus.
Je sui avec tout la Consideration la plus parfaite Monsieur votre tres humbe et tres obeisent serviteur
Bianchi
Notation: Bionchi. Novr. 4. 1781
8. Bianchi’s thirty-year career as a physicist specializing in electricity was mentioned in an article in the Jour. de Paris, Oct. 16, 1781, which described his discovery of the effectiveness of lead glass in generating electricity. He enclosed with the present letter a prospectus for the course he was proposing, at the rue du Bouloy, hôtel Notre-Dame, which would demonstrate his new machines, show the utility of conductors, and even present a method of weighing an electric force in a balance. A repetition of that four-session course was announced in similar detail in the Jour. de Paris on Dec. 4. The prospectus did not explain how Bianchi managed to “paint” with electricity—a method he used to create the profiles of BF on silk that he sent to the abbé de La Roche under cover of an undated letter (APS). One of those two portraits, reproduced on the facing page, is among BF’s papers at the APS.
