The dynamo is the most prominent instance of actual mechanical utility
in the field of electrical induction. It seems almost incredible that
the apparently small facts discovered by Faraday, the bookbinder, the
employé of Sir Humphrey Davy at weekly wages the struggling experimenter
in the subtleties of an infant giant, should have produced such results
within sixty years. [Footnote: Faraday was not entirely alone in his
life of physical research. He was associated with Davy, and quarreled
with him about the liquefaction of chlorine and other gases, and was the
companion of Wallaston, Herschel, Brand, and others. In connection with
Stodart, he experimented with steel, with results still considered
valuable. The scientific world still speaks of his quarrel with Davy
with regret, since the personalities of great men should be free from
ordinary weaknesses. But Lady Davy was not a scientist, and while the
brilliant young mechanic was in her husband's employment for scientific
purposes she insisted upon treating him as a servant, whereat the
independence of thinking which made him capable of wandering in fields
unknown to conventionality and routine blazed into natural resentment.
The quarrel of 1823 must have been greatly augmented, in the lady's
eyes, in 1824, for in that year Faraday was made a member of the Royal
Society.
In his lectures and public experiments he was greatly assisted by a man
now almost forgotten, an "intelligent artilleryman" named Andersen. This
unknown soldier with a taste for natural science doubtless had his
reward in the exquisite pleasure always derived from the personal
verification of facts hitherto unknown. There is often a pecuniary
reward for the servant of science. Just as often there is not, and the
work done has been the same.
It was on Christmas morning, 1821, that Faraday first succeeded in
making a magnetic needle rotate around a wire carrying an electric
current. He was the discoverer of benzole, the basis of our modern
brilliant aniline dyes. In 1831 he made the discovery he had been
leading to for many years--that of magneto-electric induction. All we
have of electricity that is now a part of our daily life is the result
of this discovery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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