The Divining Rod by William Fletcher Barrett

The publication caused controversy and in the wake of this Barrett decided to found a society of like-minded individuals to help further his research. In September 1876 Barrett published a paper outlining the result of these investigations and by 1881 he had published preliminary accounts of his additional experiments with thought transference in the journal Nature. Barrett believed that he had been witness to thought transference and by the 1870s he was investigating poltergeists. He also discovered the shortening of nickel through magnetisation in 1882.īarrett became interested in the paranormal in the 1860s after having an experience with mesmerism. During his studies of metals and their properties, Barrett worked with W. From its Foundation to the Year 1900, (Dublin, 1907)īarrett discovered Stalloy (otherwise known as Permaloy), a silicon-iron alloy used in electrical engineering and also did a lot of work on sensitive flames and their uses in acoustic demonstrations. Barrett: An Historical Sketch of the Royal College of Science. From the early 1880s he lived with his mother, sister, and two live-in servants in a residence at Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire).W.F. In 1873 he became Professor of Experimental Physics at the Royal College of Science for Ireland. He then taught at the Royal School of Naval Architecture. In 1855 they moved to Manchester and Barrett was then educated at Old Trafford Grammar School.Alan Gauld, ‘Barrett, Sir William Fletcher (1844–1925)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004īarrett then took chemistry and physics at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and then became the science master at the International College, London (1867–9) before becoming assistant to John Tyndall at the Royal Institution (1863–1866). The family returned to their native England in Royston, Hertfordshire in 1848. There he lived with his mother, Martha Barrett, née Fletcher, and his sister the social reformer Rosa Mary Barrett. He was born in Jamaica where his father, William Garland Barrett, who was an amateur naturalist, Congregationalist minister and a member of the London Missionary Society, ran a station for saving the souls of emancipated African slaves. Sir William Fletcher Barrett (10 February 1844 in Kingston, Jamaica – ) was an English physicist and parapsychologist.

The Divining Rod by William Fletcher Barrett