Page talk:Experimental Determination of the Velocity of Light (1878 manuscript)/8

"R" looks strange: corrected from "C"?
On the 3d line, the "R" is very peculiar looking. It appears that Michelson may have started to write "C", then overwritten to make it into "R". In Figure 5, on the previous page, "R" labels a ring, while "C" labels a structure above (in the page) the ring. --Mike O&#39;D 01:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Michelson omitted comma?
On the 8th line, "one side the reflection taking place" has no comma visible after "side", although it appears to be called for grammatically, and by Michelson's earlier style. --Mike O&#39;D 01:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

"species" garbled, overwritten
At the end of line 9, "species" is sloppy, and appears to be overwritten. The region around the "c" appears to have an "e" as well. My best guess is that Michelson started to write "speceis", or perhaps "speeces", and overwrote a correction. The proper reading of the manuscript is very debatable here, but Michelson's intention is highly likely to be "species." --Mike O&#39;D 01:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Figure 6 hard to find
Line 14 refers to "Fig. 6", which is on the previous page, in the upper left-hand corner of Figure 5. All other figures occur scrupulously in order, and all are on separate insertions, except for Figures 11-12, which are side by side. --Mike O&#39;D 01:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Michelson misspelled "carrying"
On line 16, "carying" is very clearly misspelled, with no way to interpret it as unclear handwriting. --Mike O&#39;D 01:42, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

"Foucault's" written a bit differently
11th line from the end, "Foucault's" is written with the final "s" clearly separated, and with a flourish that suggests it was added after writing "Foucault." In other cases of the posessive, "Foucaults" is connected continuously, with the apostrophe apparently added afterward. The ample space before the following word "plan", suggest an immediate correction, rather than one added on proofreading. --Mike O&#39;D 01:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

"then" looks like "their"
7th line from the end, without context I might have taken "then" for "their." The "n" has a loop in it. But the complete lack of dot for an "i" (which Michelson usually includes quite distinctly), and the fact that other "n"s tend in the same direction, though never so far, makes me interpret the word as "then" (which also makes sense in the sentence). --Mike O&#39;D 01:49, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

"axis of figure" a technical term?
2d last line, I thought at first that "axis of figure" should refer to a Figure, whose number Michelson accidentally omitted. But there is no Figure with an axis of its own (rather, objects shown in a Figure have axes), the references to Figures are very consistently capitalized and abbreviated, with period, as "Fig.", and there is grammatical parallelism with "axis of rotation" in the end of the sentence on the following page. So, I think that "axis of figure" is a technical term in optics. It would be good to verify this. --Mike O&#39;D 01:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)