In the year 1846 the scientific world was greatly interested by the publication of a most extraordinary series of experimental researches in electricity conducted by Faraday, illustrating alike the genius of the man and the spirit and methods of scientific investigation during the early part of the Victorian epoch. That spirit was, in the main, antagonistic to vacuous speculation or unprofitable theorising. It was daring enough in its utilitarianism to track by direct experiment the subtle elements of, or prove by tangible demonstration what were the occult relations which subsisted between, forms of matter and modes of force. “I have long held the opinion,” wrote Faraday, “that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin, or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.... I recently resumed the inquiry by experiment in a most strict and searching manner, and have at last succeeded in magnetising and electrifying a ray of light and in illuminating a magnetic line of force.”[64] The phrase is not a felicitous one to express the idea of the transformation and transmutation of the forces, but it is worth citing as the original expression used. The paper from which it is taken simply proved that a ray of polarised light sent through certain transparent substances in the line of action connecting the two poles of a magnet, became visible or invisible just as the current was flowing or was stopped. In another paper “On New Magnetic Actions,” Faraday proved that a non-magnetic body suspended freely in the line of a magnetic current is repelled by either pole, and takes up a position at right angles to the line, and, therefore, at right angles to the line a magnetic body would assume in similar circumstances.