Probably the earliest investigator afield was Romagnosi, an Italian physician residing in Trent (Tyrol), who, in the year 1802, published in the "Gazetta" of his town an account of an experiment which he had made, and which showed that he was working on promising lines. What he did was this: having connected one end of a silver chain to a voltaic pile, and having carried the chain through a glass tube for the purpose of insulation, he presented the free end, terminating in a knob, to a compass-needle, also insulated. At first, the needle was attracted; and, after contact, repelled. Whatever Romagnosi thought of his experiment and its theoretical bearing, the attraction and subsequent repulsion of the compass-needle which he said he observed were electrostatic and not electromagnetic effects. The Italian physician was indeed on the verge of a great discovery; but he halted in his course and lost his opportunity. Mojon, Professor of chemistry in Genoa, was a little more fortunate, though he, too, failed to improve his opportunities. In 1804, he sought to magnetize steel needles by placing them for a period of twenty days in circuit with a battery of one hundred elements of the crown-of-cups type, and had the satisfaction of finding them permanently magnetized when withdrawn from the circuit. Unlike the electrostatic effect of his fellow-countryman Romagnosi, this was unquestionably an electromagnetic effect, the first link in the long chain connecting electricity with magnetism. That this result attracted wide attention at the time, as it well deserved, is evident from the notice given by Izarn in his "Manuel du Galvanisme," and by Aldini in his "Essai Théorique et expérimental sur le Galvanisme," both of which were published in Paris in the same year, 1804. Though the manuals of Izarn and Aldini served to give a fresh impetus to the quest of the relationship between electricity and magnetism, it was not, however, until the year 1820 that the cardinal discovery was made by one philosopher and the intimate relationship revealed by another. Then all Europe rang with the names of Oersted, the fortunate discoverer of the "magnetic effect" of the electric current, and Ampère, whose masterly analysis disclosed the nature of the long-sought-for connection. In the delight of the hour, men called Oersted the Columbus, and Ampère the Newton, of electricity. Though a philosopher of a high order and lecturer of interest and brilliancy, Oersted was, nevertheless, a poor experimentalist. He was fine in the abstract, awkward in the concrete. Often did he call for the assistance of a student to perform an experiment for the class under his direction. Hansteen, who is celebrated for his very fine work in terrestrial magnetism, often had this privilege, for he was clear of mind and deft of hand. Writing to Faraday, he said: "Oersted was a man of genious, but very unsuccessful as a demonstrator, for he could not manipulate instruments."