Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

Davy wrote a kind reply, and arranged for an interview with young Faraday. In this, however, he candidly advised him to stick to his business, telling him very plainly that "science was a harsh mistress, and, from a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarded those who devoted themselves to her service." He apparently put an end to all further consideration of the subject by promising Faraday the book-binding work of the Institution, and his own besides.

Faraday was not satisfied to go back to the book-shop, even with all this kindly patronage, but there was nothing else for it, and so for a time he continued at his duties and spent his spare moments reading science and his evenings at scientific lectures, or in remaking the experiments he had seen and others suggested by them, and above all in rewriting the notes that he had taken. There is no livelier picture in all the history of science, of how a man will, in spite of all obstacles, get the things he cares for, if he really cares for them, than that of Faraday thus teaching himself science in the face of what seems almost insurmountable discouragement. Fortunately, not long after he had been thus forcibly called to the attention of Sir Humphry Davy, the former assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution not only neglected his duties, but became a source of considerable annoyance. His misfortune proved Faraday's opportunity. He was offered the post. The salary was only twenty-five shillings a week, but he accepted it very willingly. One might think that at last his scientific career was opened for him, but his new post was no sinecure. The labors required from him, indeed, were so manifold that it is somewhat surprising that he found any time for his own improvement. His duties as set forth in writing were:

"To attend and assist the lecturers and professors preparing for and during lectures. Where any instruments or apparatus may be required, to attend to their careful removal from the model room and laboratory to the lecture room, and to clean and replace them after being used, reporting to the managers such accidents as shall require repair, a constant diary being kept by him for that purpose. That in one day in each week he be employed in keeping clean the models in the repository, and that all the instruments in the glass cases be cleaned and dusted at least once within a month."

The previous assistant had complained of the amount of work that was required of him. It is easy to see that his duties were rather exacting and time-taking. Faraday did not confine himself to them, though he did perform them with great assiduity. His interest in experimental chemistry was soon noted, and he was allowed to take his share in the experiments going on in the laboratory. Some of his first work was the extraction of sugar from beet-root; but he was soon to have abundant experience of the deterring side of chemistry. Not long after he began his work in the laboratory, he had to manufacture some bisulphide of carbon, one of the most nauseating of compounds. He found it disgusting enough as an experience, but the study of it brought its compensation.

It was much more than foul odors that Faraday had to encounter, for Davy was still occupying himself with the study of the explosives, in the investigation of which he had been injured the previous year. Faraday suffered from four or five explosions during the course of the first month or two of his employment. Indeed, the substance with which they were experimenting proved so unreliable in this regard that, after a second rather serious injury to Davy, further study of it was given up.

Once Faraday had secured his post at the Royal Institution, his life-work was before him, and he became deeply engaged in scientific speculations, investigations and experiments of all kinds. The young man who had found and made opportunities when they were so distant and difficult, now made use of all that were so ready at hand. He did not confine himself to his laboratory work, however, but seems always to have felt that the contact of minds engaged along the same lines was the best possible way to be stimulated to knowledge. He applied and was admitted as member of the Philosophical Society of London, an association of some two score of men occupied with many things during the day, but interested in science, so far as they could get the books and the opportunities for its study. They met every Wednesday evening and discussed various subjects in science or, as they called it then, in philosophy, and they seem to have occupied themselves with many questions in the social as well as the natural sciences. These men, most of whom were older than Faraday, soon came to look up to him because of the depth and increasing breadth of his knowledge, and we have some emphatic expressions of their admiration for him.

Faraday's earliest successful scientific investigation was accomplished in chemistry. This might have been expected, from the fact that he began his work with Sir Humphry Davy, whose principal scientific investigations had been concerned with chemistry. His own great scientific work was to be done in electricity. Even in the brief time that he devoted to chemistry, however, he succeeded in making some discoveries of deep significance. For instance, in his special study of chlorine, he demonstrated the existence of the two chlorides of carbon which had not hitherto been obtained. Above all, he impressed his personality upon methods in chemistry. He was the first to realize how much technics were to mean in the modern advancement of science, and he made methodic chemistry, in distinction from practical chemistry, the object of very special study. His work on Chemical Manipulation did more to train successful students of chemistry and to make good investigators in this department of science than any other single work in his generation. It has continued to be of interest down even to our own time, and is well worthy of consultation by all those who are interested in chemistry as a science, and especially in original research in that subject.

It was with regard to gases, however, that Faraday's most striking chemical work was done. He succeeded in liquefying several gases, and was the first to make clear that all matter could probably exist in each of the three different states—solid, liquid and gaseous—according as the proper conditions for each particular state were present. One might almost have expected that the serious dangers incurred in his early days in the Royal Institution, when his chief, Sir Humphry Davy, suffered so severely and he himself was more than once involved, might have deterred him from further investigation along similar lines; but Faraday's ardor for scientific investigation overcame any hesitancy there might have been. The effect of gases upon human beings proved as attractive to Faraday as it had been to Davy. His experiments upon chlorine threatened to prove seriously injurious to his throat, and he was warned of the danger that he was running in the effort to determine whether such gases were respirable and what their effects upon human beings were. The warning was disregarded, however, though he exercised somewhat more care in subsequent observations. His experiments in the respiration of gases finally led him to a discovery of cardinal importance in the very practical field of anæsthesia. Sir Humphry Davy, just at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had made a series of interesting experiments on nitrous oxide gas, the so-called "laughing gas," and had pointed out very definitely its anæsthetic properties. While suffering from toothache he had inhaled the gas, and had experienced prompt alleviation of the pain. He described in detail these curious effects, and suggested that there might be a place for nitrous oxide in surgery, at least for minor operations. The words he employed with regard to this subject show that the idea of anæsthesia, as we now understand it, had come to him very definitely. Not quite a score of years later, Faraday, recalling the experiments of Davy with nitrous oxide, studied sulphuric ether, and showed that the inhalation of the vapor of this substance produced anæsthetic effects very similar to those of nitrous oxide gas, but with the possibility of prolonging them much more easily and apparently with less danger than would be the case with the latter. In every history of anæsthesia, these two sets of experiments at the Royal Institution must be set down as foundation-stones, and Faraday's name particularly must be hailed as one of the initiators of a supremely beneficent advance in modern surgery.

Faraday had given up business to devote himself to science, and he was not to be seduced from the purpose of making his life unselfish and doing things, not for money, but for the good of science and his own satisfaction. As a practical chemist, he soon had many opportunities to increase his salary by making analyses for industrial purposes. During one year, the amount of work thus offered him was paid for so well that it formed an addition of some £500 sterling to his salary. It took away precious time, however, that he might otherwise devote to original work. As soon as Faraday realized this possibility of interference with his scientific investigations, he cut it off, quite content to live on the modest salary of his position at the Royal Institution. His action in the matter would remind one very much of Pasteur, in the latter half of the century, when asked by the Empress Eugénie, to whom he had been just exhibiting his discoveries in fermentation, whether he would not apply these to actual manufacture and so make a fortune for himself in brewing. Pasteur replied that he thought it unworthy of a French scientist to devote his time to money-making, with all the world of science open before him.[30]

With a conscientious patriotism, however, that was typical of the man and his ways, there was one exception to this rule of not taking outside work that Faraday made. In a letter to Lord Auckland, long afterward, he says: "I have given up for the last ten years or more, all professional occupation and voluntarily resigned a large income, that I might pursue in some degree my own objects of research. But in doing this I have always, as a good subject, held myself ready to assist the government if still in my power, but not for pay; for, except in one instance (and then only for the sake of the person joined with me), I refused to take it. I have had the honor and pleasure of application, and that very recently, from the Admiralty, the Ordnance, the Home Office, the Woods and Forests and other departments, all of which I have replied to and will reply to as long as strength is left me."