Michael Faraday, his life and work / by Silvanus P. Thompson.

  • Silvanus P. Thompson
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Michael Faraday, his life and work / by Silvanus P. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Thus closed, with the exception of two fragmentary papers, one on “ Physical Lines of Force,” and the other on “Some Points in Magnetic Philosophy,” in the years 1853 and 1854 respectively, the main life- work of Faraday, his “Experimental Researches.” Their effect in revolutionising electric science, if slow, was yet sure. Though the principle of the dynamo was discovered and published in 1831, nearly forty years elapsed before electric-lighting machinery became a commercial product. Though the depend- ence of inductive actions, both electromagnetic and , electrostatic, upon the properties of the intervening medium was demonstrated and elaborated in these “ Researches,” electricians for many years continued to propound theories which ignored this fundamental fact. French and German writers continued to publish treatises based on the ancient doctrines of action at a distance, and of imaginary electric and magnetic fluids. Von Boltzmann, a typical German of the first rank in science, says that until there came straight from England the counter-doctrines amidst which Faraday had lived, “we (in Germany and France) had all more or less imbibed with our mothers’ milk the ideas of magnetic and electric fluids acting direct at a distance.” And again, “The theory of Maxwell ”—that is, Faraday’s theory thrown by Maxwell into mathematical shape—“ is so dia- metrically opposed to the ideas which have become customary to us, that wc must first cast behind us all our previous views of the nature and operation of electric forces before we can enter into its portals.” The divergence of view between Faraday and the