But it was not by the success of the lectures that this year deserves to be remembered in the history of the Institution. Lectures, indeed, are the support of the Institution, but discovery constitutes its great success; and this year is famous for the first of those great discoveries on which the credit of the Institution depends. The union of chemistry and electricity was established by Davy.
Volta sent the first account of his discovery of the voltaic pile to Sir Joseph Banks. His paper was printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1800—on the ‘Electricity Excited by the mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds.’ Davy, on October 20, 1800, wrote, ‘Galvanism I have found, by numerous experiments, to be a process purely chemical,’ and on June 18, 1801, the first paper Davy sent to the Royal Society was on a galvanic combination of a single metallic plate and two fluids. In May 1802 he says, ‘A battery of immense size has been made for the Institution, and I am now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that have not been decomposed.’ His lectures on Agriculture, Mineralogy, and Geology so occupied his time that very little remained for original research, and it was not until this year that a close examination of the decomposition of water by electricity led him to investigate the action of the voltaic battery, and to establish the union of electricity and chemistry. For this and his former work the name of Davy ought for ever to be inseparably united with the discovery of chemical electricity. But the honour at that time paid to Davy was not for establishing the production of electricity by chemistry, but for endeavouring to prove that all chemical action was caused by electricity. He received no praise as the founder of chemical electricity, but he was looked on as the discoverer of electro-chemistry—that is, of the theory that the electrical condition or polarity of each element determined its chemical action.
The following year (1807) is still more memorable in the annals of the Institution on account of the originality of the discoveries made in the laboratory. No year in the life of the Institution has equalled this in the magic novelty of the results that were obtained. Davy (æt. 28) proved that the bases of the alkalies were solid metals. He called them potassium and sodium, and he showed that they made potash and soda when united with oxygen.
The year 1831 was a noble year for the Royal Institution. In it Faraday (æt. 40) discovered that the magnet produced electricity and founded magneto-electricity.
Great discoveries in different sciences made at different periods do not admit of any accurate comparison. It may, however, be said that in unimagined novelty the results of Davy far surpassed the results of Faraday; for the discovery of magneto-electricity had been foreshadowed by the discovery of electro-magnetism; but in its telegraphic and other applications the discovery of magneto-electricity will keep the name of Faraday for ever in the remembrance of the world.
How much the prosperity of the Institution depended upon Davy was made very evident by his illness, which occurred soon after his discoveries were made. In the early part of the year the managers had not recognised the fact that original discovery belonged to him, and that their committees were useless for investigation. They did give Davy early in the year a new assistant;[28] but on March 9 they resolved that, in consequence of the completion of the chemical laboratory, which was furnished with the necessary utensils and materials for carrying on operations and experiments, ‘the chemical professor, besides his regular annual courses of lectures delivered in the lecture room, shall make, direct, superintend, and explain as far as may be necessary all chemical experiments, or courses of experiments, which the managers from time to time shall direct to be made in the laboratory, and give his assistance in all committees appointed by the managers for the purpose of scientific investigation which may require his aid or stand in need of the use of the laboratory for prosecuting their experiments or researches.’
In May the visitors said ‘the Institution continued to afford every prospect of realising in their fullest extent those results which its original promoters had in view.’
On July 13 the lectures of Mr. Davy were announced to the managers. In the autumnal session, which was to begin the first week of December, he intended to give twenty-six lectures on the General Elements of Chemistry, and in the spring sixteen lectures on Chemistry in its Connexion with Physiology and the Phenomena of Animated Nature. The same day Mr. Davy informed the managers that he proposed going into Cornwall for five weeks, with a view to collect specimens for the collection of minerals, and that he wished William Payne, the attendant on the laboratory, to accompany him. It was resolved that William Payne’s expenses in the journey, and those incurred by Mr. Davy in collecting the specimens, should be defrayed by the managers.
In October Davy made his great discoveries,[29] and the last week of November he was laid low with fever, caught whilst disinfecting Newgate Prison.
On December 7 the following notice was ordered to be sent round to the proprietors and subscribers: ‘Mr. Davy having been confined to his bed this last fortnight by a severe illness, the managers are under the painful necessity of giving notice that the lectures will not commence until the first week of January next.’