Description | Sending account in respect of apparatus made for and attendance upon the Excise Committee, by his father RB Bate, with explanation and apology why it is so long overdue.
"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. |