Minutes of meeting of the Excise Committee Preliminary meeting relating to the hydrometer. "The Excise Committee 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. Present at the meeting: Francis Bailey, Captain Francis Beaufort, M I Brunel, J G Children, Michael Faraday, WH Pepys, P M Roget and Rev R Sheepshanks 11 December 1832