He possessed an intuitive bent of mind to inquire about the relations of facts to one another. Convinced by sheer converse with nature in the laboratory, of the correlation of forces and of the conservation of energy long before either of those doctrines had received distinct enunciation as principles of natural philosophy, he seems never to have viewed an action without thinking of the necessary and appropriate reaction; never to have deemed any physical relation complete in which discovery had not been made of the converse relations for which instinctively he sought. So in December, 1824, we find him experimenting on the passage of a bar magnet through a helix of copper wire (see Quarterly Journal for July, 1825), but without result. In November, 1825, he sought for evidence that might prove an electric current in a wire to exercise an influence upon a neighbouring wire connected to a galvanometer. But again, and yet again in December of the same year, the entry stands “No result.” A third failure did not convince him that the search was hopeless: it showed him that he had not yet found the right method of experimenting. It is narrated of him how at this period he used to carry in his waistcoat pocket a small model of an electromagnetic circuit—a straight iron core about an inch long, surrounded by a few spiral turns of copper wire—which model he at spare moments would take out and contemplate, using it thus objectively to concentrate his thoughts upon the problem to be solved. A copper coil, an iron core. Given that electricity was flowing through the one, it evoked magnetism in the other. What was the converse? At first sight it might seem simple enough. Put magnetism from some external source into the iron core, and then try whether on connecting the copper coil to a galvanometer there was any indication of an electric current. But this was exactly what was found not to result.
OTHER MEN’S FAILURES.
And not Faraday alone, but others, too, were foiled in the hope of observing the expected converse. Not all who tried were as wise or as frank as Faraday in confessing failure. Fresnel, in the height of the fever of Oersted’s discovery, had announced to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, on the 6th of November, 1820, that he had decomposed water by means of a magnet which was laid motionless within a spiral of wire. Emboldened by this announcement, Ampère remarked that he too had noticed something in the way of production of currents from a magnet. But before the end of the year both these statements were withdrawn by their authors. Again, in the year 1822, Ampère, being at Geneva, showed to Professor A. de la Rive in his laboratory a number of electromagnetic experiments from his classical researches; and amongst them one[20] which has been almost forgotten, but which, had it been followed up, would assuredly have led Ampère to the discovery of the induction of currents. In the experiment in question a thin copper ring, made of a narrow strip folded into a circle, was hung inside a circular coil of wire, traversed by a current. To this apparatus a powerful horse-shoe magnet was presented; and De la Rive states that, when the magnet was brought up, the suspended ring was observed sometimes to move between the two limbs of the magnet, and sometimes to be repelled from between them according to the sense of the current in the surrounding coil. He and Ampère both attributed the effect to temporary magnetism conferred upon the copper ring. Ampère himself was at the time disposed to attribute it to the possible presence of a little iron as an impurity in the copper. There are, however, some discrepancies in the three published versions of the story. According to Becquerel, Ampère had by 1825 satisfied himself of the non-existence of induction currents.
A PUZZLING EXPERIMENT.
Quite independently, the question of the possibility of creating currents by magnets was raised by another discovery, that of the so-called “magnetism of rotation.” In 1824 Arago had observed that a fine magnetic compass constructed for him by Gambey, having the needle suspended in a cell, the base of which was a plate of pure copper, was thereby damped in its oscillations, and instead of making two or three hundred vibrations before it came to rest, as would be the case in the open air, executed only three or four of rapidly decreasing amplitude.[21] In vain did Dumas at the request of Arago analyse the copper, in the supposition that iron might be present. Inquiry compelled the conclusion that some other explanation must be sought. And, reasoning from the apparent action of stationary copper in bringing a moving magnetic needle to rest, he conjectured that a moving mass of copper might produce motion in a stationary magnetic needle. Accordingly he set into revolution, beneath a compass needle, a flat disc of copper, and found that, even when a sheet of card or glass was interposed to cut off all air-currents, the needle tended to follow the moving copper disc, turning as if dragged by some invisible influence. To the suggestion that mere rotation conferred upon copper a sort of temporary magnetism Arago listened with some impatience. All theories proposed to account for the phenomenon he discredited, even though emanating from the great mathematician Poisson. He held his judgment in absolute suspense. Babbage and Herschel measured the amount of retarding force exerted on the needle by different materials, and found the most effective to be silver and copper (which are the two best conductors of electricity), after them gold and zinc, whilst lead, mercury, and bismuth were inferior in power. The next year the same experimenters announced the successful inversion of Arago’s experiment; for by spinning the magnet underneath a pivoted copper disc they caused the latter to rotate briskly. They also made the notable observation that if slits are cut radially in the copper disc they diminish its tendency to be dragged by the spinning magnet. Sturgeon showed that the damping effect of a moving copper disc was diminished by the presence of a second magnet pole of contrary kind placed beside the first. All these things were most suggestive of the real explanation. It clearly had something to do with the electric conductivity of the metal disc, and therefore with electric currents. Sturgeon five years later came very near to the explanation: after repeating the experiments he concluded that the effect was an electric disturbance in the copper disc, “a kind of reaction to that which takes place in electromagnetism.”
Faraday knew of all the discussions which had arisen respecting Arago’s rotations. They may have been the cause of his unsuccessful attempts of 1824 and 1825. In April, 1828, for the fourth time he tried to discover the currents which he was convinced must be producible by the magnet, and for the fourth time without result. The cause of failure was that both magnet and coil were at rest.
Fig. 4.
The summer of 1831 witnessed him for the fifth time making the attack on the problem thus persistently before him. In his laboratory note-book he heads the research “Experiments on the production of electricity from magnetism.” The following excellent summary of the laboratory notes is taken from Bence Jones’s “Life and Letters”:—
I have had an iron ring made (soft iron), iron round and ⅞ths of an inch thick, and ring six inches in external diameter. Wound many coils of copper round, one half of the coils being separated by twine and calico; there were three lengths of wire, each about twenty-four feet long, and they could be connected as one length, or used as separate lengths. By trials with a trough each was insulated from the other. Will call this side of the ring A. On the other side, but separated by an interval, was wound wire in two pieces, together amounting to about sixty feet in length, the direction being as with the former coils. This side call B.[22]