James Alexander to Benjamin Franklin, January 29, 1753

New York. January 29. 1753

Sir

About a week ago the papers whereof that herewith Mark’t A is a Translation were sent to Peruse, 9 and on my returning them With a Translation I beged Leave to Communicate Coppies of them to You and Dr. Colden with Liberty if you thought proper to print them or any Part of them. In Answer To which I obtained the Leave coppied at the end of Them and Struck out La Gallissonieres name, for the reason in the Leave.

The Delay of that Leave put me upon Dipping into the Abridgment of the Philosophical Transactions to see what [was] there said of the matters in those papers, and from thence I made the Extracts in the paper Herewith Mark’t B. 1 by which I find that that which had baffled all the Art of man hitherto To discover with any Tolerable Certainty (Vizt. the Suns Distance from the Earth) may with great Certainty be Discovered by the Transit of Venus over the sun the 26 of May 1761 Old Stile, if well Observed in the East Indies and here and these Observations Compared Together.

It Would be a great honour To our young Colledges in America if they forthwith prepared themselves with a proper apparatus for that Observation and made it. Which I Doubt not they would Severally Do if they were Severally put in mind of it and of the great Importance that that Observation would be To Astronomy and that the missing that One Observation cannot be retrieved for 250 years To come.

You have on so many Occasions Demonstrated Your Love To Literature and the good of Mankind in General that I thought no person so proper as your self to think of the ways and means of perswadeing these Colledges to prepare themselves for taking that Observation and in order to it you may make what use you please of the papers herewith, only not my name.