FARADAY.
Few names on the roll of the worthies of science are better known through all the world than that of Michael Faraday, who was born in England in 1791 and died in 1867. Rising from poverty, he became assistant to Sir Humphrey Davy, in the Royal Institution, London, where he soon exhibited great ability as an experimenter, and a rare genius for discovering the secret relation of distant phenomena to one another, which gave him his skill as a discoverer, so that he came to be regarded, according to Professor Tyndall, "the prince of the physical investigators of the present age," "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen."
His greatest discoveries may be stated to have been magneto-electric induction, electro-chemical decomposition, the magnetization of light, and diamagnetism, the last announced in his memoir as the "magnetic condition of all matter." There were many minor discoveries. The results of his labors are apparent in every field of science which has been cultivated since his day. Indeed, they made a great enlargement of that field. His life of simple independence was a great contribution to the highest wealth of the world. He might have been rich. He lived in simplicity and died poor. It is calculated that, if he had made commercial uses of his earlier discoveries, he might easily have gathered a fortune of a million of dollars. He preferred to use his extraordinary endowments for the promotion of science, from which he would not be turned away by honors or money, declining the presidency of the Royal Institution, which was urged upon him, preferring to "remain plain Michael Faraday to the last," that he might make mankind his legatees.
While Faraday does not claim the parentage of the electric telegraph, he was among the earliest laborers in the practical application of his own discoveries, without which the telegraph would probably never have had existence. It was on his advice that Mr. Cyrus W. Field determined to push the enterprise of the submarine cable. His labors were essential to the success of the efforts of his friend Wheatstone in telegraphy. It was his genius which discovered the method of preventing the incrustation by ice of the windows of light-houses, and also a method for the prevention of the fouling of air in brilliantly lighted rooms, by which health was impaired and furniture injured. He discovered a light, volatile oil, which he called "bicarburet of hydrogen." It is now known to us as benzine, which is so largely employed in the industrial arts. Treated by nitric acid, that has produced a substance largely used by the perfumer and the confectioner. From that came the wonderful base aniline, which was not only useful in the study of chemistry, as throwing light on the internal structure of organic compounds, but has come also into commerce, creating a great branch of industry, by giving strong and high colors which can be fixed on cotton, woolen, and silken fabrics. It may be worth while to notice what gratifying beauty was provided for the eye, while profitable work was afforded to the industrious.
It is not to be forgotten that, whatever we have of magneto-electric light, in all its various applications, is due to Faraday's discoveries.
Faraday's distinguished successor, Professor Tyndall, in his admirable and generous tribute to his famous predecessor, says: "As far as electricity has been applied for medical purposes, it is almost exclusively Faraday's." How much of addition to human comfort that one sentence includes, who can estimate? And who can calculate the money-value to commerce in the production of instruments used in the application of electricity to medicine? Professor Tyndall continues: "You have noticed those lines of wire which cross the streets of London. It is Faraday's currents that speed from place to place through these wires. Approaching the point of Dungeness, the mariner sees an unusually brilliant light, and from the noble Pharos of La Hève the same light flashes across the sea. These are Faraday's sparks, exalted by suitable machinery to sunlight splendor. At the present moment (1868), the Board of Trade and the Brethren of the Trinity House, as well as the Commissioners of Northern Lights, are contemplating the introduction of the magneto-electric light at numerous points upon our coast; and future generations will be able to point to those guiding stars in answer to the question, what has been the practical use of the labors of Faraday?"