Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution

SUBJECT AREA: Electricity

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Faraday's father was a blacksmith recently moved south from Westmorland. The young Faraday's formal education was limited to attendance at "a Common Day School", and then he worked as an errand boy for George Riebau, a bookseller and bookbinder in London's West End. Riebau subsequently took him as an apprentice bookbinder, and Faraday seized every opportunity to read the books that came his way, especially scientific works.

A customer in the shop gave Faraday tickets to hear Sir Humphry Davy lecturing at the Royal Institution. He made notes of the lectures, bound them and sent them to Davy, asking for scientific employment. When a vacancy arose for a laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution, Davy remembered Faraday, who he took as his assistant on an 18- month tour of France, Italy and Switzerland (despite the fact that Britain and France were at war!). The tour, and especially Davy's constant company and readiness to explain matters, was a scientific education for Faraday, who returned to the Royal Institution as a competent chemist in his own right. Faraday was interested in electricity, which was then viewed as a branch of chemistry. After Oersted's announcement in 1820 that an electric current could affect a magnet, Faraday devised an arrangement in 1821 for producing continuous motion from an electric current and a magnet. This was the basis of the electric motor. Ten years later, after much thought and experiment, he achieved the converse of Oersted's effect, the production of an electric current from a magnet. This was magneto-electric induction, the basis of the electric generator.

Electrical engineers usually regard Faraday as the "father" of their profession, but Faraday himself was not primarily interested in the practical applications of his discoveries. His driving motivation was to understand the forces of nature, such as electricity and magnetism, and the relationship between them. Faraday delighted in telling others about science, and studied what made a good scientific lecturer. At the Royal Institution he introduced the Friday Evening Discourses and also the Christmas Lectures for Young People, now televised in the UK every Christmas.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Weapons and armour

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His family came from Germany and he was the son of a music master. He first became interested in science at the age of 14, when visiting his mineralogist uncle in Hamburg, and studied chemistry at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London. In 1845 he became one of the twenty-six founding students, under A.W.von Hofmann, of the Royal College of Chemistry. Such was his aptitude for the subject that within two years he became von Hermann's assistant and demonstrator. In 1851 Abel was appointed Lecturer in Chemistry, succeeding Michael Faraday, at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and it was while there that he wrote his Handbook of Chemistry, which was co-authored by his assistant, Charles Bloxam.

Abel's four years at the Royal Military Academy served to foster his interest in explosives, but it was during his thirty-four years, beginning in 1854, as Ordnance Chemist at the Royal Arsenal and at Woolwich that he consolidated and developed his reputation as one of the international leaders in his field. In 1860 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, but it was his studies during the 1870s into the chemical changes that occur during explosions, and which were the subject of numerous papers, that formed the backbone of his work. It was he who established the means of storing gun-cotton without the danger of spontaneous explosion, but he also developed devices (the Abel Open Test and Close Test) for measuring the flashpoint of petroleum. He also became interested in metal alloys, carrying out much useful work on their composition. A further avenue of research occurred in 1881 when he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission set up to investigate safety in mines after the explosion that year in the Sealham Colliery. His resultant study on dangerous dusts did much to further understanding on the use of explosives underground and to improve the safety record of the coal-mining industry. The achievement for which he is most remembered, however, came in 1889, when, in conjunction with Sir James Dewar, he invented cordite. This stable explosive, made of wood fibre, nitric acid and glycerine, had the vital advantage of being a "smokeless powder", which meant that, unlike the traditional ammunition propellant, gunpowder ("black powder"), the firer's position was not given away when the weapon was discharged. Although much of the preliminary work had been done by the Frenchman Paul Vieille, it was Abel who perfected it, with the result that cordite quickly became the British Army's standard explosive.

Abel married, and was widowed, twice. He had no children, but died heaped in both scientific honours and those from a grateful country.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Telecommunications

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Sent to stay with relatives at the age of 6 because of the illness of his father, when the latter died in 1811 Henry was apprenticed to a silversmith and then turned to the stage. Whilst he was ill himself, a book on science fired his interest and he began studying at Albany Academy, working as a tutor to finance his studies. Initially intending to pursue medicine, he then spent some time as a surveyor before becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Albany Academy in 1826. There he became interested in the improvement of electromagnets and discovered that the use of an increased number of turns of wire round the core greatly increased their power; by 1831 he was able to supply to Yale a magnet capable of lifting almost a ton weight. During this time he also discovered the principles of magnetic induction and self-inductance. In the same year he made, but did not patent, a cable telegraph system capable of working over a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km). It was at this time, too, that he found that adiabatic expansion of gases led to their sudden cooling, thus paving the way for the development of refrigerators. For this he was recommended for, but never received, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. Five years later he became Professor of Natural Philosophy at New Jersey College (later Princeton University), where he deduced the laws governing the operation of transformers and observed that changes in magnetic flux induced electric currents in conductors. Later he also observed that spark discharges caused electrical effects at a distance. He therefore came close to the discovery of radio waves. In 1836 he was granted a year's leave of absence and travelled to Europe, where he was able to meet Michael Faraday. It was with his help that in 1844 Samuel Morse set up the first patented electric telegraph, but, sadly, the latter seems to have reaped all the credit and financial rewards. In 1846 he became the first secretary of the Washington Smithsonian Institute and did much to develop government support for scientific research. As a result of his efforts some 500 telegraph stations across the country were equipped with meteorological equipment to supply weather information by telegraph to a central location, a facility that eventually became the US National Weather Bureau. From 1852 he was a member of the Lighthouse Board, contributing to improvements in lighting and sound warning systems and becoming its chairman in 1871. During the Civil War he was a technical advisor to President Lincoln. He was a founder of the National Academy of Science and served as its President for eleven years.

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