| Description | Asking for the Excise Committee of the Royal Society to examine the relative merits of Allan's and Bate's Saccharometers. Letter read at the meeting of the 3 March 1836.
"The Excise Committee [of the Royal Society] worked in response to a request from the Treasury: its task was to devise a simple and practicable form of hydrometer to be used by excisemen in assesing the duty on spirits, wine and beer, and thus it duly did, to the complete satisfaction of the Treasury", M Boas-Hall, 'All Scientists Now: The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century', Cambridge: CUP, 1984, pp168. |