The Philosopher's Tree

A Selection of Michael Faraday's Writings

Peter Day

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367447595
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000157321
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book provides a comprehensive selection of Michael Faraday's writings, taken from all aspects of his life, intimate and public. It is designed to show the relationships between his many activities, especially with the Royal Institution, for whose bicentenary this collection is published.

Chapter 1
The Beginning: In a Nutshell

The facade of the Royal Institution after the addition of columns in 1838. Watercolour drawing by T Hosmar Shepherd.

The story of how Michael Faraday, bom the son of a blacksmith on 22 September 1791 and later apprenticed to a bookbinder, came to be one of history’s greatest scientists, is so remarkable that in a work of fiction it could be taken as pure fantasy Let us therefore begin this account of Faraday’s life and work in his own words with the brief outline of his first encounter with Fĭumphry Davy, and arrival at the Royal Institution, where he was to spend the remainder of his working life. Just after Davy’s death in 1829, when he had already been at the Royal Institution for sixteen years, he replied to an enquiry from John Ayrton Paris, the first biographer of Humphry Davy, as to how he first met Davy.

The house where Faraday grew up in Jacob’s Well Mews.

When I was a bookseller’s apprentice, I was very fond of experiment and very averse to trade. It happened that a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some of Sir H. Davy’s last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and afterwards wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume.

My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the service of Science, which I imagined made its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, if an opportunity came in his way, he would favour my views. At the same time, I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures. Early in 1813 he requested to see me, and told me of the situation of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, then just vacant.

At the same time that he thus gratified my desires as to scientific employment, he still advised me not to give up the prospects I had before me, telling me that Science was a harsh mistress and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service. He smiled at my notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on that matter.

Finally, through his good efforts I went to the Royal Institution early in March of 1813, as assistant in the laboratory and, in October of the same year, went with him abroad as his assistant in experiment and in writing. I returned with him in April 1815, resumed my station in the Royal Institution, and have, as you know, ever since remained there.

Chapter 2
Early Years: Friends, Family and Marriage

Mr Riebau’s bookshop in Blandford Street.

While young Michael was working in Mr Riebau’s book shop in Blandford Street, just off Baker Street in the centre of London, he had a wide circle of friends, based on the City Philosophical Society. This group was a good deal less formal than the name suggests but it provided a forum for ideas, or just friendship, as the following extract from a letter in 1811 to a fellow member, Thomas Huxtable, shows:

Tit for tat, says the proverb; and it is my earnest wish to make that proverb good in two instances. First you favoured me with a note a short time since, and I hereby return the compliment; and, secondly, I shall call ‘tit’ upon you next Sunday, and hope you will come to tea ‘tat’ with me the Sunday after. In short, the object of this note is to obtain your company, if agreeable to your convenience and health (which I hope is perfectly recovered long before this), the Sunday after next.

Youthful Friendship: Benjamin Abbott

Michael Faraday’s closest friend, encountered through the City Philosophical Society, was Benjamin Abbott. Not only were they frequent visitors to one another’s homes but, even though they were living only a mile or two apart in central London, they exchanged letters. What first brought them together was a mutual interest in chemical experiments. For example, Faraday exultantly describes the electrolytic cell he made from simple pieces bought in a shop with his meagre pocket money, and how he used it to decompose a solution of magnesium sulphate:

I have lately made a few simple galvanic experiments merely to illustrate to my self the first principle of science. I was going to Knights to obtain some Nickle, & bethought me that they had Malleable Zinc. I enquired & bought some. Have you seen any yet? The first portion I obtained was in the thinnest pieces possible; observe it in a flattened state. It was, as they informed me, thin enough for the Electric Snake, or as I before called it, de Luc’s Electric column. I obtained it for the purpose of forming discs, with which & copper to make a little battery. The first I completed contained the immense number of seven pairs of Plates!!! and of the immense size of half-pennies each! I, Sir, covered them with seven half-pence and I interposed between seven or rather six pieces of paper, soaked in a solution of Muriate of Soda!!!—but to laugh no longer Dear A…, rather wonder at the effects this trivial power produced. It was sufficient to produce the decomposition of the Sulphate of Magnesia; an effect which extremely surprised me, for I did not, (I could not) have any idea that the agent was component to the purpose. A thought has struck me—I will tell you, I made the communication between the top & bottom of the pile & the solution with copper wire: do you conceive that it was the copper that decomposed the earthy sulphate? (That part, I mean, immersed in the solution) that a galvanic effect took place I am sure, for both wires became covered in a short time with bubbles of some gas, & a continued stream of very minute bubbles, appearing like small particles, rose through the solution from the negative wire. My proof that the Sulphate was decomposed was that in about 2 hours the clear solution became turbid; Magnesia was suspended in it.

After Faraday started work at the Royal Institution as the Chemical Assistant, he still wrote to Benjamin Abbott, sometimes about experiments that were going on, but also to set down in a quite personal way his developing opinions about the methods of science, about the nature of scientific explanations but beyond them all, the importance of human dialogue and friendship. Here he is describing how he got home in the rain after a Sunday gathering on 19 July 1812, thinking in a youthful spontaneous way as he went, about all manner of scientific issues. Exuberance leaps from the page:

July 20, 1812

Monday Evening. 10 o’clock

Dear Abbott,

Were you to see me, instead of hearing from me, I conceive that one question would be how did you get home on Sunday evening? I suppose this question because I wish to let you know how much I congratulate myself upon the very pleasant walk (or rather succession of walks, runs and hops) I had home that evening, and the truly Philosophical reflections they gave rise to.

I set off from you at a run and did not stop until I found myself in the midst of a puddle and quandary of thoughts respecting the heat generated in animal bodies by exercise. The puddle, however, gave a turn to the affair and I proceeded from thence deeply immersed in thoughts respecting the resistance of fluids to bodies precipitated into them. I did not at that time forget the instances you and your brother had noticed in the afternoon to that purpose.

My mind was deeply engaged on this subject, and was proceeding to place itself as fast as possible in the midst of confusion, when it was suddenly called to take care of the body by a very cordial, affectionate & also effectual salute from a spout. This of course gave a new turn to my ideas and from thence to Blackfriars Bridge it was busily bothered amongst projectiles and parabolas. At the Bridge the wind came in my face and directed my attention as well as earnestly as it could go to the inclination of the pavement. Inclined planes were then all the go and a further illustration of this point took place on the other side of the Bridge, where I happened to proceed in a very smooth, soft, and equable manner for the space of three or four feet. This movement, which is vulgarly called slipping, introduced the subject of friction, and the best method of lessening it, and in this frame of mind I went on with little or no interruption for some time except occasional and actual experiments connected with the subject in hand, or rather in head.

The velocity and momentum of falling bodies next struck not only my mind but my head, my ears, my hands, my back and various other parts of my body, and tho I had at hand no apparatus by which I could ascertain those points exactly, I knew that it must be considerable by the quickness with which it penetrated my coat and other parts of my dress. This happened in Holbom and from thence I went home sky-gazing and earnestly looking out for every Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, Cirro-Cumuli, Cirro-Strata and Nimbus that came from above the Horizon.

But chemistry was more to the fore in young Michael’s mind than physics at that time. In September 1812 we find him explaining that the reaction between phosphorus chloride and ammonia is not an acid-base reaction of what we would nowadays call the Brønsted type, but something quite different, leading to the conclusion that chlorine is an element (what he called a ‘simple body’):

The substance (the Chloride of Phosphorus, as we will call it) combines with Ammonia—here I fancy you crying out ‘an Acid, an Acid, it combines with an Alkali’!!! but softly my good Sir, we have no acid as yet. Tho it does combine with Ammonia, no Phosphate is formed but a dry powder. This powder is very different to the combination of PA & Ammonia and possesses different properties & characters. It is exceedingly fixed in the fire; it will not rise at a white heat whereas the Phosphate of Ammonia is decomposed at an heat far below that point. Consequently it must be a different substance & Chlorine must be a simple body.

In the spring of 1813 he was able to describe to Abbott how Sir Humphry Davy met with a very nasty accident on preparing a new explosive substance that we know now as nitrogen trichloride. This compound had been prepared first by the French chemist Dulong, who lost an eye and several fingers when handling it. Experimental chemistry in Davy’s Laboratory, too, was a hazardous business:

You desire me to inform you at times of any thing new in philosophy that may fall in my way and I shall accordingly obey your desires by detailing to you at present some circumstances relating to the newly discovered detonating compound. This I do with more eagerness as I have been engaged this afternoon in assisting Sr. H. in his experiments on it, during which we had two or three unexpected explosions.

This compound is formed by inverting over a solution of the Nitrate or Muriate of Ammonia an air jar full of fresh made pure clean chlorine gas, all contact of oil, grease or inflammable matter being carefully guarded against. It was at first supposed necessary to surround the solution with ice but it is of no importance to do so; it in fact forms better without it.

Immediately that the gas is inverted over the solution an action commences. This is evident by the gradual tho slow rise of the solution in the jar. As the absorption of the gas takes place quickly, spots are evident on the surface of the solution in the jar which increase in size and appear as drops of an high coloured oil. As the action goes on, these drops become so large as at last to fall from the surface and sink to the bottom of the solution.

With respect to its detonation powers, it exhibits them with many bodies when a small portion of it is placed in a basin and covered with water, and oil or Phosphorus is then brought in contact with it. It explodes violently; the basin is shattered to pieces and the water is thrown in all directions. But I can inform you of a very easy and safe method of inflaming it by oil, which is thus: drop a small portion of it on an oily surface and an instantaneous inflammation will ensue but without noise. Heat also explodes this body and it was by this means that Sr. H. met with his very unpleasant accident.

Faraday himself had some narrow escapes, as another letter to Abbott a few days later reveals:

Agreeable to what I have said above, I shall at this time proceed to acquaint you with the results of some more experiments on the detonating compound of Chlorine and Azote, and I am happy to say I do it at my ease, for I have escaped (not quite unhurt) from four different and strong explosions of the substance. Of these, the most terrible was when I was holding between my thumb and finger a small tube containing abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• A Note about Sources
• A Note about Punctuation
• 1 The Beginning: In a Nutshell
• 2 Early Years: Friends, Family and Marriage
• 3 Touring the Continent: 1813–1815
• 4 Way of Life and Work
• 5 Colleagues and Friends
• 6 Words for Things
• 7 Science at the Bench
• 8 Leaves from a Laboratory Notebook
• 9 Science in the Lecture Theatre
• 10 Science for Young People
• 11 Honour and Recognition
• 12 Public Affairs: Consultant and Advocate
• 13 Final Days
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index