Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

On the 22nd of September, 1791, was born, at Newington Butts, then an outlying Surrey village, but since long surrounded and swallowed up within the area of Greater London, the boy Michael Faraday. He was the third child of his parents, James and Margaret Faraday, who had but recently migrated to London from the little Yorkshire village of Clapham. Clapham lies under the shadow of Ingleborough, on the western border of the county, midway between Settle and Kirkby Lonsdale. The father, James Faraday, was a working blacksmith; the mother, daughter of a farmer of Mallerstang, the romantic valley which runs past Pendragon Castle to Kirkby Stephen. James Faraday was one of the ten children of a Robert Faraday, who in 1756 had married Elizabeth Dean, the owner of a small homestead known as Clapham Wood Hall, since pulled down. All Robert Faraday’s sons appear to have been brought up to trades, one being a shoemaker, another a grocer, another a farmer, another a flax-worker, and another a shopkeeper. Descendants of some of these still live in the district.

Accordingly, Faraday called on Davy, who received him in the anteroom to the lecture theatre, by the window nearest to the corridor. He advised him then to stick to bookbinding, promising to send him books from the Institution to bind, as well as other books. He must have been agreeably impressed, otherwise he would not, when disabled, have sent for Faraday to write for him. Early in 1813 the humble household, in which Faraday lived with his widowed mother in Weymouth Street, was one night startled by the apparition of Sir Humphry Davy’s grand coach, from which a footman alighted and knocked loudly at the door. For young Faraday, who was at that moment undressing upstairs, he left a note from Sir Humphry Davy requesting him to call next morning. At that interview Davy asked him whether he was still desirous of changing his occupation, and offered him the post of assistant in the laboratory in place of one who had been dismissed. The salary was to be twenty-five shillings a week, with two rooms at the top of the house. The minute appointing him is dated March 1, 1813:—

ENTERS ROYAL INSTITUTION.

I am, dear Sir, very faithfully, your obedient servant,

M. Faraday.

CHLORINE LIQUEFIED.

The work of liquefying the gases had been taken up by Faraday during his hours of liberty from other duties. It was probably his characteristic dislike to “doubtful knowledge” which prompted him to re-examine a substance which had at one time been regarded as chlorine in a solid state, but which Davy in 1810 had demonstrated to be a hydrate of that element. The first work was, as narrated above, to make a new analysis of the supposed substance. This analysis, duly written out, was submitted to Sir Humphry, who, without stating precisely what results he anticipated might follow, suggested heating the hydrate under pressure in a hermetically sealed glass tube. This Faraday did. When so heated, the tube filled with a yellow atmosphere, and on cooling was found to contain two liquids, one limpid and colourless like water, the other of an oily appearance. Concerning this research a curious story is told in the life of Davy. Dr. Paris, Davy’s friend and biographer, happened to visit the laboratory while Faraday was at work on these tubes. Seeing the oily liquid, he ventured to rally the young assistant upon his carelessness in employing greasy tubes. Later in the day, Faraday, on filing off the end of the tube, was startled by finding the contents suddenly to explode; the oily matter completely disappearing. He speedily ascertained the cause. The gas, liberated from combination with water by heat, had under the pressure of its own evolution liquefied itself, only to re-expand with violence when the tube was opened. Early the next day Dr. Paris received the following laconic note:—

FORESHADOWINGS.

This production of magnetism from electricity, at will, and at a distance, by the simple device of sending the electricity to circulate as a current around the central core of iron was then, as now, a cause of much speculation. The iron core which is to be made temporarily into a magnet stands alone, isolated. Though surrounded outwardly by the magnetising coil of copper wire, it does not touch it; nay, must be screened from contact with it by appropriate insulation. The electric current entering the copper coil at one end is confined from leaving the copper wire by any lateral path: it must circulate around each and every convolution, nor be permitted to flow back by the return-wire until it has performed the required amount of circulation. That the mere external circulation of electric current around a totally disconnected interior core of iron should magnetise that core; that the magnetisation should be maintained so long as the circulation of electricity is maintained; and that the magnetising forces should cease so soon as the current is stopped, are facts, familiar enough to every beginner in the science, but mysterious enough from the abstract point of view. Faraday was firmly persuaded that, great as had been these discoveries of the production of magnetism and magnetic motions from electricity, there remained other relations of no less importance to be discovered. Again and again his mind recurred to the subject. If it were possible to use electricity to produce magnetism, why should not the converse be true? In 1822 his notebook suggestion was, as we have seen, “Convert magnetism into electricity.” Yes, but how?

Faraday’s enthusiasm about experimental researches was at times unrestrained, and always contagious. Dumas describes how Faraday repeated for him the experimental demonstration of the action of magnetism on light. Having come to the final experiment, Faraday rubbed his hands excitedly, while his eyes lit up with fire, and his animated countenance told the passionate feelings which he brought to the discovery of scientific truth. On another occasion Plücker, of Bonn, then on a visit to London, showed Faraday in his own laboratory the action of a magnet upon the luminous electric discharge in vacuum tubes. “Faraday danced round them; and as he saw the moving arches of light, he cried: ‘Oh, to live always in it!’” Once a friend met him at Eastbourne in the midst of a tremendous storm, rubbing his hands together gleefully because he had been fortunate enough to see the lightning strike the church tower. To the Baroness Burdett-Coutts he once wrote inviting her to see some experiments upon spectrum analysis in his private room. The experiments, he wrote, will not be beautiful except to the intelligent.