Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of ContentsLord, John
Philosophy
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents
Lord, John
History
The wonderful completeness of Faraday's researches into the production
of electricity from magnetism may be inferred from the fact that all
the forms of magneto-electric induction known to-day--namely,
self-induction, or the induction of an active circuit on itself; mutual
induction, or the induction of an active circuit on a neighboring
circuit; and electro-magnetic induction, and magneto-electric induction,
or the induction produced in conductors through which the magnetic flux
from electro and permanent magnets respectively is caused to pass--were
discovered and investigated by him. Nor were these investigations
carried on in the haphazard, blundering, groping manner that
unfortunately too often characterizes the explorer in a strange country;
on the contrary, they were singularly clear and direct, showing how
complete the mastery the great investigator had over the subject he was
studying. It is true that repeated failures frequently met him, but
despite discouragements and disappointments he continued until he had
entirely traversed the length and breadth of the unknown region he was
the first to explore.
Let us now briefly examine Faraday's many remaining discoveries and
inventions. Though none of these were equal to his great discovery, yet
many were exceedingly valuable. Some were almost immediately utilized;
some waited many years for utilization; and some have never yet been
utilized. We must avoid, however, falling into the common mistake of
holding in little esteem those parts of Faraday's work that did not
immediately result either in the production of practical apparatus, or
in valuable applications in the arts and sciences, or those which have
not even yet proved fruitful. Some discoveries and devices are so far
ahead of the times in which they are produced that several lifetimes
often pass before the world is ready to utilize them. Like immature or
unripe fruit, they are apt to die an untimely death, and it sometimes
curiously happens that, several generations after their birth, a
subsequent inventor or discoverer, in honest ignorance of their prior
existence, offers them to the world as absolutely new. The times being
ripe, they pass into immediate and extended public use, so that the
later inventor is given all the credit of an original discovery, and the
true first and original inventor remains unrecognized.
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