FARADAY, MICHAEL.. - ON THE VOLTAIC BATTERY.

Experimental Researches in Electricity. - Tenth Series. §16. On an improved form of the Voltaic Battery. § 17. Some practical results respecting the construction and use of the Voltaic Battery. (Sections 1119-1160). Received June 16, - Read June 18, 1835.

(London, Richard Taylor, 1835). 4to. No wrappers as extracted from "Philosophical Transactions" 1835 - Part II. Pp. 263-274. Clean and fine.

First appearance of this paper in which Faraday describes his improvements of the Voltaic battery.

"This paper relates altogether to the practical construction and use of the voltaic battery. Guided by the principles developed in former series, the author concluded that in voltaic instruments in which the copper surrounded the zinc, there was no occasion for insulation of the contiguos coppers, provided they did not come into metallic contact; and therefore in the cionstruction of some new instruments he interposed paper only between the coppers instead of the usual insulating plate of porcelain or glass."(Abstract)..


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 ceaseto 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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