In the winter of 1819, Professor Oersted, Secretary to the Royal Society of Copenhagen, published an account of some experiments, in which the electric current, such as is supposed to pass from the positive to the negative pole of a Voltaic battery, along a wire which connects them, caused a magnetic needle near it to deviate from its natural position, and to assume a new one, the direction of which was observed to depend upon the relative position of the needle and the wire.[71] [71] For this discovery, the President and Council of the Royal Society adjudged to M. Oersted the medal on Sir Godfrey Copley's Donation for the year 1820. It may be necessary to premise, that these experiments were conducted in a form which had never before suggested itself to the enquirer; _viz. with the two ends of the pile in communication with each other_,--a condition which enabled it to discharge itself freely: this circumstance will, at once, explain the reason of all preceding failures. It was never before suspected that the electric current, passing _uninterruptedly_ through a wire, connecting the two ends of a Voltaic battery, was capable of being manifested by any effect; the experiments, however, in question furnished an unequivocal test of its passage by its action on the magnetic needle; and which may be shortly stated as follows: The opposite poles of a battery, in full action, were joined by a metallic wire, which, to avoid circumlocution, has been called the _uniting conductor_, or the _uniting wire_. On placing the wire above the magnet and parallel to it, the pole next the negative end of the battery always moved westward, and when the wire was placed under the needle, the same pole went towards the east. If the wire was on the same horizontal plane with the needle, no declination whatever took place, but the magnet showed a disposition to move in a vertical direction; the pole next the negative side of the battery being depressed when the wire was to the west of it, and elevated when it was placed on the east side.