Robert Hare to Thomas Jefferson, 31 March 1824
From Robert Hare
Philada March 31st 1824
Dear Sir
Pursuant to your request in your letter of the [12]th Inst, & my reply to it, I now furnish you with a list of the apparatus which I suppose adequate for a course of chemical instruction,1 in your new College. I also send you some pamphlets, which I have referred to in the catalogue, or which contain engravings of apparatus, referred to, or which may be desirable. In addition to the apparatus mention’d in my list, about from $300, to $500, might be advantageously laid out in tools, implements, agents or materials, of which a complete & extensive stock should be provided, in a place where deficiencies are not easily supplied. As respects the agents in frequent use, much may be saved by buying them at the wholesale price by the quantity.—
Upon the whole, I should suppose about $2000 dollars would be a competent provision, for the requisite expenditure. My outfit cost me at least five thousand, but my class being very large it has been necessary to have every thing on a scale proportionably great.—
Robt Hare
RC (ViU: TJP); subjoined to enclosed apparatus list; mutilated at seal; addressed: “Thos Jefferson Esqr Monticello Virginia”; franked; postmarked Philadelphia, 31 Mar.; endorsed by TJ as received 4 Apr. 1824 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosures: (1) “Letter from Robert Hare … to B. Silliman, Professor of Chemistry in Yale College—on some improved forms of the Galvanic Deflagrator—on the superiority of its deflagrating power: also, an account of an improved Single Leaf Electrometer—of the combustion of Iron by a jet of Sulphur, in Vapour—and of an easy mode of imitating native Chalybeate Waters.—Republished with corrections and additions, from Silliman’s Journal, No. 1. Vol. VII,” Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences 8 [1824]: 118–24. (2) Additional pamphlets, not found. Other enclosure printed below.
1. Manuscript: “instrution.”
Index Entries
- American Journal of Science search
- chemistry; and scientific apparatus search
- chemistry; collegiate education in search
- deflagrator (scientific instrument) search
- electrometer (scientific instrument) search
- Hare, Robert; and scientific apparatus for University of Virginia search
- Hare, Robert; Letter from Robert Hare … to B. Silliman … on some improved forms of the Galvanic Deflagrator—on the superiority of its deflagrating power: also, an account of an improved Single Leaf Electrometer—of the combustion of Iron by a jet of Sulphur, in Vapour—and of an easy mode of imitating native Chalybeate Waters search
- Hare, Robert; letters from search
- iron; mentioned search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Books & Library; works sent to search
- Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences search
- scientific instruments; deflagrators search
- scientific instruments; electrometers search
- scientific instruments; for University of Virginia search
- Silliman, Benjamin; Letter from Robert Hare … to B. Silliman … on some improved forms of the Galvanic Deflagrator—on the superiority of its deflagrating power: also, an account of an improved Single Leaf Electrometer—of the combustion of Iron by a jet of Sulphur, in Vapour—and of an easy mode of imitating native Chalybeate Waters search
- Virginia, University of; Faculty and Curriculum; scientific instruments for search
- water; chalybeate search