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senare, hösten 1812, besökte Falun, kände sig tydligen icke mindre imponerad. »I carried with me to Fahlun», skriver han, »two introducing letters to Assessor J. Gottlieb Gahn, who has for many years resided in that town, has several manufactures in it, and is also one of the proprietors of the copper. He is a man of about 68 years of age, of exceedingly pleasing manners accompanied with uncommon frankness and simplicity of character. I was not a little confounded to find, in so remote a situation as Fahlun, a man of sixty-eight familiarly acquainted with all the latest discoveries in every branch of science: an excellent mechanic, who has supplied himself with accurate philosophical instruments of every kind; but who has not, as is too often the case with practical mechanics, devoted the whole of his time to such pursuits; on the contrary, he is an accurate experimenter, and a very assiduous cultivator both of chemistry and of some other branches of science. He exhibited to me some of the curious discoveries of Malus respecting light. His chemical apparatus is extremely neat and very convenient, and he has a variety of platinum utensils, which he has constructed from bars of that metal brought from Spain, France and Great Britain. Perhaps it would not be bestowing too high a compliment on Mr. Gahn, if I were to say that he possesses the greatest quantity of general information of any man in Sweden. Nor are the frankness and affability of his manners inferior to his knowledge. I have seldom met with any person with whom I was more delighted.»
Till fullständigande av dessa omdömen må slutligen anföras följande ord av den ovan citerade anonyme författaren i Annals of Philosophy: »It will not indeed be easy to find another whose talents have been at once more brilliant and more useful, who has been more admired and more loved by his country, than John Gottlieb Gahn ... We find Gahn distinguished as a philosopher in exploring and unveiling the relations of nature; we find him as a mechanical genius, improving and perfecting the blowpipe and the balance
