In 1821, 200 years ago, history books tell of Spain granting Mexico’s independence and ceding Florida to the US. But perhaps the most important event was the moment on September 3 when 30-year-old Michael Faraday watched a metal rod move in a circle around a magnet, powered by an electric current from a battery. Imagine his excitement!
Faraday was the first to see the conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy—an electric motor! Later he made it work the other way, a dynamo turning mechanical energy into an electric current. Where would we be without those inventions, made in the basement of the Royal Institution in London?
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said to the Royal Society, “… the value of Faraday’s work today must be higher than the capitalization of all the shares on the Stock Exchange!”
She had a bust of Faraday in 10 Downing Street.
Faraday left school at age 14 to be an apprentice bookbinder. He educated himself with books that came his way and attended public lectures by Humphry Davy, the director of the Royal Institution. He wrote up his lecture notes, bound them in a 300-page book and presented them to Davy, who made him an assistant. Knowing little mathematics but having boundless curiosity and practical gifts, Faraday became the greatest experimental physicist of the 19th century.
In 1821, others were experimenting with magnets and electricity, which seemed to have a mysterious connection, and an electric motor would have been invented anyway, but Faraday was ahead of others, and prolific in fields other than electromagnetism (that word did not exist before his experiments).
I recently visited the Royal Institution basement and saw Faraday’s laboratory and equipment—not replicas, the real things! How cool is that!
