Abstract
I HASTEN to correct an error which has crept into my account in last week's NATURE (p. 171) of Prof. Newcomb's measures of the velocity of light. The arrangement employed by Foucault in 1862 was not that adopted by Newcomb, and illustrated in Fig. 1, but that sketched in Fig. 2. In other words, he placed his lens between the revolving and fixed mirrors. His apparatus is described in Comptes rendus, t. lv. p. 792, where the velocity of the rotating mirror is stated to have been 400 revolutions a second, and the total length of path between the mirrors 20 metres.
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CLERKE, A. Professor Newcomb's Determination of the Velocity of Light. Nature 34, 193 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034193c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034193c0
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