Abstract
This paper is devoted to two hitherto unpublished original documents by Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) which provide insight into his calculations of the deflection of light by isolated celestial bodies. Together with a transcription of these documents, we comment on their contents in the present-day language of physics. Moreover, we compare them with a paper by Johann Georg von Soldner (1776–1833) on the same subject.
Highlights
The history of ideas about the deflection of light by the gravitational attraction of celestial bodies goes back to the times of Isaac Newton (1642–1726)
There is a huge body of literature on pre-relativistic approaches to light deflection where, inevitably, the work of Soldner is mentioned and discussed in detail
The authors of the present paper are very grateful to the assistant archivist of Chatsworth House, Mr Aidan Haley, as well as the photo librarian, Mrs Diane Naylor, for providing us with a copy of the complete Cavendish note on light deflection
Summary
The history of ideas about the deflection of light by the gravitational attraction of celestial bodies goes back to the times of Isaac Newton (1642–1726). Only Jungnickel and McCormmach claim that Cavendish’s note could have been written no earlier than in 1804 They argue that the piece of paper Cavendish wrote on contained watermarks which were not in use before that year: Cavendish continued to hold to the particle theory of light after Thomas Young introduced the wave theory of light in 1800: in or after 1804 Cavendish calculated the gravitational bending of light passing near the surface of a body such as the limb of a star or the edge of a hair. The authors of the present paper are very grateful to the assistant archivist of Chatsworth House, Mr Aidan Haley, as well as the photo librarian, Mrs Diane Naylor, for providing us with a copy of the complete Cavendish note on light deflection (see Fig. 1) We found it interesting that in the second part of this note, not published by Dyson, in addition to a brief explanation of the result, there was a reference to another page called by Cavendish “A.5”. We compile in “Appendix B” all those characteristics of a hyperbola which Cavendish made use of and which are required for an understanding of this paper
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