It is not my intention to lay before you a life of Faraday in the ordinary accepting of the term. The duty I have to perform is to give you some notion of what he has done in the world; dwelling incidentally on the spirit in which his work was executed, and introducing such personal traits as may be necessary to the completion of your picture of the philosopher, though by no means adequate to give you a complete idea of the man. Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, on September 22, 1791, and he died at Hampton Court, on August 25, 1867.
When thirteen years old, that is to say in 1804, Faraday was apprenticed to a bookseller and bookbinder where he spent eight years of his life, after which he worked as a journeyman elsewhere. Faraday’s first contact with the Royal Institution was that he was introduced by one of the members to Sir Humphry Davy’s last lectures, that he took notes of those lectures; wrote them fairly out, and sent them to Davy, entreating him at the same time to enable him to quit trade, and to pursue science, which he loved.
Davy was helpful to Faraday, and this should never be forgotten. He at once wrote to Faraday, and afterwards, when an opportunity occurred, made him his assistant. In Rome he made rapid progress in chemistry, and after a time was entrusted with easy analyses by Davy. In those days the Royal Institution published ‘The Quarterly Journal of Science,’ the precursor of ‘Proceedings. ‘ Faraday’s first contribution to science appeared in that journal in 1816. It was an analysis of some caustic lime from Tuscany, which had been sent to Davy by the Duchess of Montrose.
Between this period and 1818 various notes and short papers were published by Faraday. In 1818 he experimented upon ‘Sounding Flames. From time to time between 1818 and 1820 Faraday published scientific notes and notices of minor weight. At this time he was acquiring, not producing; working hard for his master and storing and strengthening his own mind.
He assisted Mr. Brande in his lectures, and so quietly, skillfully, and modestly was his work done, that Mr. Brande’s vocation at the time was pronounced ‘lecturing on velvet. ‘ In 1820 Faraday published a chemical paper ‘on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and on a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. ‘ This paper was read before the Royal Society on December 21, 1820, and it was the first of his that was honored with a place in the ‘Philosophical Transactions. ‘ On June 12, 1821, he married, and obtained leave to bring his young wife into his rooms at the Royal Institution.
There for forty-six years they lived together, occupying the suite of apartments which had been previously in the successive occupancy of Young, Davy, and Brande. At the time of her marriage Mrs. Faraday was twenty-one years of age, he being nearly thirty. Oersted, in 1820, discovered the action of a voltaic current on a magnetic needle; and immediately afterwards the splendid intellect of Ampere succeeded in showing that every magnetic phenomenon then known might be reduced to the mutual action of electric currents.
This attracted Faraday’s attention to the subject. He read much about it; and in the months of July, August, and September he wrote a ‘history of the progress of electromagnetism,’ which he published in Thomson’s ‘Annals of Philosophy. ‘ Soon afterwards he took up the subject of ‘Magnetic Rotations,’ and on the morning of Christmas-day, 1821, he called his wife to witness, for the first time, the revolution of a magnetic needle round an electric current.
Incidental to the ‘historic sketch,’ he repeated almost all the experiments there referred to; and these, added to his own subsequent work, made him practical master of all that was then known regarding the voltaic current. In 1821, he also touched upon a subject which subsequently received his closer attention–the vaporization of mercury at common temperatures; and immediately afterwards conducted experiments on the alloys of steel. He was accustomed in after years to present to his friends razors formed from one of the alloys then discovered.
During Faraday’s hours of liberty from other duties, he took up subjects of inquiry for himself; and in the spring of 1823, he began the examination of a substance which had long been regarded as the chemical element chlorine, in a solid form, but which Sir Humphry Davy, in 1810, had proved to be a hydrate of chlorine, that is, a compound of chlorine and water. Faraday first analyzed this hydrate, and wrote out an account of its composition. This account was looked over by Davy, who suggested the heating of the hydrate under pressure in a sealed glass tube. This was done.
The hydrate fused, the tube became filled with a yellow atmosphere, and was afterwards found to contain two liquid substances. Dr. Paris happened to enter the laboratory while Faraday was at work. Seeing the oily liquid in his tube, he rallied the young chemist for his carelessness in employing soiled vessels. On filing off the end of the tube, its contents exploded and the oily matter vanished. The gas had been liquefied by its own pressure. Faraday then tried compression with a syringe, and succeeded thus in liquefying the gas. Davy, moreover, immediately applied the method of self compressing atmosphere to the liquefaction of muriatic gas.
Faraday continued the experiments, and succeeded in reducing a number of gases till then deemed permanent to the liquid condition. In 1844 he returned to the subject, and considerably expanded its limits. These important investigations established the fact that gases are but the vapors of liquids possessing a very low boiling-point, and gave a sure basis to our views of molecular aggregation. The account of the first investigation was read before the Royal Society on April 10, 1823, and was published, in Faraday’s name, in the ‘Philosophical Transactions.
The second memoir was sent to the Royal Society on December 19, 1844. It was rumored that while he was conducting his first experiments on the liquefaction of gases, thirteen pieces of glass were on one occasion driven by an explosion into Faraday’s eye. Some small notices and papers, including the observation that glass readily changes color in sunlight, follow here. In 1825 and 1826 Faraday published papers in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ on ‘new compounds of carbon and hydrogen,’ and on ‘sulphonaphthalic acid.
In the former of these papers he announced the discovery of Benzol, which, in the hands of modern chemists, has become the foundation of our splendid aniline dyes. But he swerved incessantly from chemistry into physics; and in 1826 we find him engaged in investigating the limits of vaporization, and showing, by exceedingly strong and apparently conclusive arguments, that even in the case of mercury such a limit exists; much more he conceived it to be certain that our atmosphere does not contain the vapor of the fixed constituents of the earth’s crust. In 1825 Faraday became a member of a committee, to which Sir John Herschel and Mr.
Dollond also belonged, appointed by the Royal Society to examine, and if possible improve, the manufacture of glass for optical purposes. Their experiments continued till 1829, when the account of them constituted the subject of a ‘Bakerian Lecture. ‘ This lectureship, founded in 1774 by Henry Baker provides that every year a lecture shall be given before the Royal Society, the sum of four pounds being paid to the lecturer. The Bakerian Lecture, however, has long since passed from the region of pay to that of honor, papers of mark only being chosen for it by the council of the Society.
Faraday’s first Bakerian Lecture, ‘On the Manufacture of Glass for Optical Purposes,’ was delivered at the close of 1829. It is a most elaborate and conscientious description of processes, precautions, and results: the details were so exact and so minute, and the paper consequently so long, that three successive sittings of the Royal Society were taken up by the delivery of the lecture. This glass did not turn out to be of important practical use, but it happened afterwards to be the foundation of two of Faraday’s greatest discoveries.
In 1827, therefore, a furnace was erected in the yard of the Royal Institution; and it was at this time, and with a view of assisting him at the furnace, that Faraday engaged Sergeant Anderson, of the Royal Artillery. Anderson continued to be the reverential helper of Faraday and the faithful servant of the Institution for nearly forty years. In 1831 Faraday published a paper, ‘On a peculiar class of Optical Deceptions,’ to which is believe the beautiful optical toy called the Chromatrope owes its origin.
In the same year he published a paper on Vibrating Surfaces, in which he solved an acoustical problem which, though of extreme simplicity when solved, appears to have baffled many men. The problem was to account for the fact that light bodies, such as the seed of lycopodium, collected at the vibrating parts of sounding plates, while sand ran to the nodal lines. Faraday showed that the light bodies were entangled in the little whirlwinds formed in the air over the places of vibration, and through which the heavier sand was readily projected.
Faraday’s resources as an experimentalist were so wonderful, and his delight in experiment was so great, that he sometimes almost ran into excess in this direction. The work thus referred to, though sufficient of itself to secure no mean scientific reputation, forms but the vestibule of Faraday’s achievements. He had been engaged within these walls for eighteen years. During part of the time he had drunk in knowledge from Davy, and during the remainder he continually exercised his capacity for independent inquiry.
In 1831 we have him at the climax of his intellectual strength, forty years of age, stored with knowledge and full of original power. Through reading, lecturing, and experimenting, he had become thoroughly familiar with electrical science: he saw where light was needed and expansion possible. The phenomena of ordinary electric induction belonged, as it were, to the alphabet of his knowledge: he knew that under ordinary circumstances the presence of an electrified body was sufficient to excite, by induction, an unelectrified body.
He knew that the wire which carried an electric current was an electrified body, and still that all attempts had failed to make it excite in other wires a state similar to its own. What was the reason of this failure? Faraday never could work from the experiments of others, however clearly described. He knew well that from every experiment issues a kind of radiation, luminous in different degrees to different minds, and he hardly trusted himself to reason upon an experiment that he had not seen. In the autumn of 1831, he began to repeat the experiments with electric currents, which, up to that time, had produced no positive result.
