Experimental Researches in Electricity

Originally published between 1839 and 1855, this three-volume collection represents a comprehensive record of Michael Faraday's landmark work on electricity.

Michael Faraday (Author)

9781108053570, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 October 2012

596 pages, 9 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 3.4 cm, 0.75 kg

Originally apprenticed to a bookbinder, Michael Faraday (1791–1867) began to attend Sir Humphrey Davy's chemistry lectures purely out of interest. Although he soon recognised that science would be his vocation, there was no defined career path to follow, and when he applied to Davy for work he was gently told to 'attend to the bookbinding'. It was only after a laboratory explosion in which Davy partially lost his sight that Faraday was taken on as his amanuensis. From this difficult beginning stemmed perhaps the most famous scientific career of the nineteenth century. This three-volume collection of Faraday's papers provides a comprehensive record of a key branch of his work. Volume 1, reissued here in a second edition of 1849, covers his early work in electricity and magnetism, including papers on lightning, electric fish, and notes on the elaborate and often beautiful experiments conducted to investigate whether magnetism could produce electricity.

1. Induction of electric currents
2. Terrestrial magneto-electric induction
3. Identity of electricities from different sources
4. New law of electric conduction
5. Electro-chemical decomposition
6. Power of platina, etc. to induce combination
7. Electro-chemical decomposition continued
8. Electricity of the voltaic pile
9. Induction of a current on itself
10. Improved voltaic battery
11. On static induction
12. Conduction or conductive discharge
13. Disruptive discharge as glow
14. Nature of the electric force or forces.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]