MICHAEL FARADAY

Hokitika Guardian, 22 August 1931, Page 6

MICHAEL FARADAY

A NOTABLE CENTENARY No scientific discovery lias produced such a remarkable change in the habits of people, or the progress of trade and industry, as that which gave the world electric light and power. Yet nine out of ten average men, if asked the question, would probably be unable to name, off-hand, the great- scientist who one hundred years ago, first determined the relationship between magnetism and electricity. So many distinguished names have been associated with the subsequent triumphs of electrical science—Wheatstone, Bell, Edison, -and Marconi, are but a few selected at random—that its /pioneer genius, Michael Faraday, has, in a comparative sense, 'receded into ancient history.

On Faraday’s discovery may be said to be based all those applications of electricity which, so to speak, now form the muscles and nerves of modern life—light, power, the transmission of news by telegraph, telephone, and radio, and the hundreds of other uses upon which civilised humanity relies to-day, and which, if' suddenly cut off, would paralyse its activities. There is hardly a phase of human life into which its application does not eirer. Without it, for example, there would be no motor-cars, no aeroplanes, no submarines, no vacuum cleaners, no wireless, no “talkies.” So depend mi upon these and other conveniences na/e we become, and so much do we take them for granted, that it is really difficult to imagine what Faraday’s world of 1831 was like without them. Michael Faraday, who was born in 1791, was the son of of a blacksmith. He had a passion for experimental science, and indeed preferred to he decribed as an “experimental philosopher” rather than as a chemist, as’he was vfirst, or an electrician, as he afterwards became. Thanks to the friendly nterest of Sir Humphrey Davy he was able to follow his natural bent in the laboratory of the Royal Institut on. Chemical research first claimed his attention, and he also did important work in connection with the manufacture of glass for optical purposes. These fields of research occupied him till 183i>. The following year came the pub’ication of his famous theory of niagnetoeleetrio induction, and for the next fifteen years lie devoted lime elf to the development and application of his theory in various directions, discovery .after discovery following in quick succe'sson. The year 1833 marked the identification of electricities from various sources. In 1834 he published his discovery of electro-chemical decomposition. The relation of electric and magnetic forces was established in 1838; magnetic rotary polarisation in 1845; diamagnetism in 1840, and so on. With each discovery the field of pos? sibilities became move widely extended. ' vl, ° the ovster.

Of no less importance than the material value of Faraday’s discoveries was the influence of his methods of investigation upon the basic principles of scientific thought. As Sir William Bragg Director of the Royal Institution, observed in a recent broadcast address, Faraday modified not only our mode of life but also our ways of thinking. He had a ifundamental belief in the unity of Nature’s purpose. Light, heat, magnetism, electricity, chemical action gravity, cohesion, must, lie reasoned, be interconnected. Here it may be interesting to quotoe Sir William Bragg: In pagan days men raised up a little god to rule independently over every separate manifestation of Nature ; sunshine and wind, and rain, lightning and thunder. As thought broadened the little powers became aspects of a greater majesty. The wold b came one kingdom. To Faraday it seemed that the laws of such a kingdom must hear a common impress and be interwoven in their effects. To look for the connections must be a fundamental inquiry. Indeed, it would not be wrong to sum lip the greater part of Faraday’s scientific activities as an endeavour to join all Nature’s manifestations together. From this allegorical illustration

may he possible to evisage the influence of electricity upon the future of human activities. The tendency is in the direction of large co-operative movements, of unifications of interest-, unity of effort, of mass production. There can bo no doubt that the increasing adaptation of electricity to the needs and covenience of man has facilitated these tendencies. Its very nature, universality, and harnessed distribution make its influence command and unifying. And let it he noted, the world as yet- is only on the threshold of tin vast possibilities to he explored in the domain of this mysterious element. How far electricity may he dOmontrated to he part of Man’s physcal rr mental embodiment, determining his complete and /logical connection with his universe, remains to be seen. Behind everything, at the very source ot electricity, still elusive, evading the efforts of the scientist to harness if power, is the Mighty Atom.