FARADAY, MICHAEL.. - FARADAY'S DOCTRINE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.

Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Sixteenth Series. § 24. On the source of power in the voltaic pile. i. Exiting electrolytes, &c. being conductors of thermo and feeble currents. ii. Inactive conducting circles containing an electrolytic fluid. iii. Actove circles exited by solutuion of sulphurett og potassium, &c. (Sections 1796-1912). Received January 23, - Read February 6, 1840. (+) Seventeenth Series. § 24. On the source of power in the voltaic pile. - (Continued). iv. The exciting chemical force affected by temperature. v. The exciting chemical force effected by dilution. vi. Difference in the order of the metallic elements of voltaic circles. vii. Active voltaic circles and batteries without metallic contact. viii. Considerations of the sufficiency of chemical action. ix. Thermo-electrical evidence. x. Improbable nature of the assumed contact force. (Sections 1913-2074). Received January 30, - Read March 19, 1840. 2 Papers.

(London, Richard and John E. Taylor, 1840). 4to. No wrappers as extracted from "Philosophical Transactions" 1840 - Part I. Pp. 61-91 and 1 engraved plate. + Pp. 93-127. Both papers Clean and fine.

First appearance of a historical paper in chemistry and physiscs in which Faraday announces his principle, that for all known cases of energy, the energy is not generated, but only transformed. The principle he showed applied to the voltaic cell, and he used it to argue against the so-called contact school in chemistry. The process imagined by the contact school "would indeed be a creation of power, like no other force in nature". There is no such thing in the world as "a pure creation of force; a production of power without a corresponding exhaustion of something to supply it."

"In his very long paper 'on the source of power in the voltaic pile', divided into two parts (XVI and XVII, 1840), faraday marshalled what he thought was owewhelming evidence against the contact theory in favour of the chemical theory."(Partington: A History of Chemistry IV: p. 138).

From 1831 to 1852 Michael Faraday published his "Experimental Researches in Electricity" in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. These papers contain not only an impressive series of experimental discoveries, but also a collection of heterodox theoretical concepts on the nature of these phenomena expressed in terms of lines of forces and fields. He published 30 papers in all under this general title.They represents Faraday's most importent work, are classics in both chemistry and physics and are the experimental foundations for Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory of light, using Faraday's concepts of lines of force or tubes of magnetic and electrical forces. His many experiments on the effects of electricity and magnetism presented in these papers lead to the fundamental discoveries of 'induced electricity' (the Farday current), the electronic state of matter, the identity of electricity from different sources, equivalents in electro-chemical decomposition, electrostatic induction, hydro-electricity, diamagnetism, relation of gravity to electricity, atmospheric magnetism and many other.

"Among experimental philosophers Faraday holds by universal consent the foremost place. The memoirs in which his discoveries are enshrined will never cease to be read with admiration and delight; and future generations will preserve with an affection not less enduring the personal records and familiar letters, which recall the memory of his humble and unselfish spirit."(Edmund Whittaker in A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity).

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