Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

Very satisfactory, but make more sensible apparatus.

Tuesday, Sept. 4.

Apparatus for revolution of wire and magnet. A deep basin with bit of wax at bottom and then filled with mercury. A magnet stuck upright in wax so that pole just above the surface of mercury. Then piece of wire floated by cork at lower end dipping into merc^y and above into silver cup as before:—

Fig. 3. (facsimile of Original Sketch.)

The research on the electromagnetic rotations, which was published in the Quarterly Journal of Science for October, 1821 (and reprinted in the second volume of the “Experimental Researches in Electricity”), was the occasion of a very serious misunderstanding with Dr. Wollaston and his friends, which at one time threatened to cause Faraday’s exclusion from the Royal Society. Faraday’s prompt and frank action in appealing to Dr. Wollaston saved him in a very unpleasant crisis; and the latter came three or four times to the laboratory to witness the experiments. On Christmas Day of the same year, Faraday succeeded in making a wire through which an electric current is passing move under the influence of the earth’s magnetism alone. His brother-in-law, George Barnard, who was in the laboratory at the time, wrote:—“All at once he exclaimed, ‘Do you see, do you see, do you see, George?’ as the wire began to revolve. One end I recollect was in the cup of quicksilver, the other attached above to the centre. I shall never forget the enthusiasm expressed in his face and the sparkling in his eyes!”

SCENES IN THE LABORATORY.

In 1822 little was added to Faraday’s scientific work. He had a joint paper with Stodart on steel before the Royal Society, and in the Quarterly Journal two short chemical papers and four on electromagnetical motions and magnetism. He had long kept a commonplace book in which he entered notes and queries as well as extracts from books and journals; but this year he began a fresh manuscript volume, into which he transferred many of the queries and suggestions of his own originating. This volume he called “Chemical Notes, Hints, Suggestions, and Objects of Pursuit.” It contains many of the germs of his own future discoveries, as the following examples show:—

Convert magnetism into electricity.

Do pith balls diverge by disturbance of electricities in consequence of induction or not?