Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, volume two

Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Robert Aitken, 1786. First edition.

Fifteen years after the first volume, the Society's second appeared in 1786, and Franklin fills much of it: a letter on smoky chimneys, an essay on measuring humidity with a hygrometer, a description of coal-burning stoves, and his paper on the Gulf Stream with its folding chart at page 316. Rittenhouse, Rush, John Morgan and James Madison also contribute. Rush's paper here is his account of Dr. Hugh Martin's cancer powder, read to the Society on 3 February 1786.

Franklin began to study the current in 1768 as postmaster of the colonies, after noticing that westward crossings took about two weeks longer than the return. His cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket sea captain, described the stream to him and sketched its course, and the Post Office had the sketch engraved over an out-of-date chart of the Atlantic. Captains largely ignored it. On his Atlantic crossings of 1775 and 1776 Franklin measured the water temperature in and out of the stream and found it warmer. He had the chart copied at Paris in 1782 and printed it here, in its first American edition.

Franklin also had the Gulf Stream article printed separately as an offprint.

Quarto, with xxxiiii, 397 and [11] pages and five engraved folding plates, among them the chart of the Gulf Stream at page 316. Contemporary calf, the spine ruled in gilt with a red morocco lettering piece. Some foxing. Provenance: Jay Snider (booklabel).

References: Evans 19465. Rink 5. ESTC W15744. Wheat and Brun 721.

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