Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Faraday was a chemist, and Davy’s most brilliant pupil and efficient assistant. His earliest experiments were in the line of electrolysis. This was about 1822, but it was not until 1831 that he began to devote his brilliant talents as an experimentalist and lecturer wholly to electrical researches, and for a quarter of a century his patient, wonderful labours and discoveries continued. It has been said that “although Oersted was the discoverer of electro-magnetism and Ampère its expounder, Faraday made the science of magnets electrically what it is at the present day.”

Great magnetic power having been developed by passing a galvanic current around a bar of soft iron, Faraday concluded that it was reasonable to suppose that as mechanical action is accompanied by an equal amount of reaction, electricity ought to be evolved from magnetism.

“It was in 1831 that Faraday demonstrated before the Royal Society that if a magnetized bar of steel be introduced into the centre of a helix of insulated wire, there is at the moment of introduction of the magnet a current of electricity set up in a certain direction in the insulated wire forming the helix, while on the withdrawal of the magnet from the helix a current in an opposite direction takes place.

“He also discovered that the same phenomenon was to be observed if for the magnet was substituted a coil of insulated wire, through which the current from a voltaic element was passing; and further that when an insulated coil of wire was made to revolve before the poles of a permanent magnet, electric currents were induced in the wires of the coil.”—Journal of the Society of Arts.

On these discoveries were based the action of all magneto-dynamo electric machines—machines that have enabled the world to convert the energy of a steam engine in its stall, or a distant waterfall, into electric energy for the performance of the herculean labours of lighting a great city, or an ocean-bound lighthouse, or transporting quickly heavy loads of people or freight up and down and to and fro upon the earth.

As before stated, Faraday was also the first to proclaim the laws of electrolysis, or electro-chemical decomposition. He expressed conviction that the forces termed chemical affinity and electricity are one and the same. Subsequently the great Helmholtz, having proved by experiment that in the phenomena of electrolysis no other force acts but the mutual attractions of the atomic electric charges, came to the conclusion, “that the very mightiest among the chemical forces are of electric origin.”

Faraday having demonstrated by his experiments that chemical decomposition, electricity, magnetism, heat and light, are all inter-convertible and correlated forces, the inventors of the age were now ready to step forward and put these theories at work in machines in the service of man. Faraday was a leader in the field of discovery. He left to inventors the practical application of his discoveries.

Prof. Henry in America was, contemporaneously with Faraday, developing electricity by means of magnetic induction.

In 1832, Pixii, a philosophical instrument-maker of Paris, and Joseph Saxton, an American then residing in London, invented and constructed magneto-machines on Faraday’s principle of rendering magnetic a core of soft iron surrounded with insulated wire from a permanent magnet, and rapidly reversing its polarity, which machines were used to produce sparks, decompose liquids and metals, and fire combustible bodies. Saxton’s machine was the well-known electric shock machine operated by turning a crank. A similar device is now used for ringing telephone call bells.

Prof. C. G. Page of Washington and Ruhmkorff of Paris each made a machine, well known as the Ruhmkorff coil, by which intense electro-magnetic currents by induction were produced. The production of electrical illumination was now talked of more than ever. Scientists and inventors now had two forms of electrical machines to produce light: the voltaic battery and the magneto-electric apparatus. But a period of comparative rest took place in this line until 1850, when Prof. Nollet of Brussels made an effort to produce a powerful magneto-electric machine for decomposing water into its elements of hydrogen and oxygen, which gases were then to be used in producing the lime light; and a company known as “The Alliance” was organized at Paris to make large machines for the production of light.