“The real discoverer of the magnetic properties of electric currents M. Oersted, Professor of Natural Philosophy, and Secretary of the Royal Society of Copenhagen. In a work which he published in the German, about the year 1813, on the identity of chemical and electrical forces, he had thrown out conjectures concerning the relations subsisting between the electric, galvanic and magnetic fluids, which he conceived might differ from one another only in their respective degrees of tension. If galvanism, he argued, be merely a more latent form of electricity, so magnetism may possibly be nothing more than electricity in a still more latent form; and he, therefore, proposed it as a subject worthy of inquiry, whether electricity employed in this, its most latent form, might not be found to have a sensible effect upon a magnet. It is difficult clearly to understand what he meant by the expression of _latent states_, as applied to electricity, but it may be sufficient for us to know, that in the various endeavours he subsequently made to verify his conjectures, he was led to such forms of experiment as afforded decisive indications of the influence of Voltaic currents on the magnetized needle. Yet, even after he had succeeded thus far, it was a matter of extreme difficulty to determine the real direction of this action, and it was not till the close of the year 1819, that his perseverance was at length rewarded by complete success. “The first account of his discovery that appeared in England is contained in a paper, which he himself communicated, in Thompson’s Annals of Philosophy, for October, 1820, vol. 16, page 273; and in which the following experiments are described. The two poles of a powerful Voltaic battery were connected by a metallic wire, so as to complete the galvanic circuit. The wire which performs this office he called the _uniting_ wire; and the effect, whatever it may be, which takes place in this conductor, and in the space surrounding it, during the passage of the electricity, he designates by the term _electric_ conflict, from an idea that there takes place some continued collision and neutralization of the two species of electric fluids, while circulating in opposite currents in the apparatus. Then taking a magnetic needle, properly balanced on its pivot, as in the mariner’s compass, and allowing it to assume its natural position in the magnetic meridian, he placed a straight portion of the uniting wire horizontally above the needle, and in a direction parallel to it; and then completed the circuit, so that the electric current passed through the wire. The moment this was done, the needle changed its position, its ends deviating from the north and south towards the east and west, according to the direction in which the electric current flowed, so that by reversing the direction of the current the motion of the needle was also reversed. The general law he expressed as follows: ‘That end of