Faraday
Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution, September and November 1845. A piece of heavy glass hung between the poles of an electromagnet turning to sit ACROSS the field instead of along it, the word 'diamagnetic' coined with Whewell's help, and the notebooks recording it.
Part of Diamagnetism
15 moments in this segment.
- - Michael Faraday, oil portrait by Thomas Phillips. Thomas Phillips's oil portrait of Michael Faraday, painted in 1842, three years before the diamagnetism experiments. It shows Faraday at almost exactly the age he was when he put a bar of bismuth between the poles of his great electromagnet. The canonical period likeness for the 1845 scenes.
- - Faraday's 1845 magneto-optical electromagnet and sectored disc. The surviving electromagnet Faraday used in 1845, photographed with one of his sectored discs. This is the actual instrument at the heart of both the Faraday effect and the diamagnetism discovery: the bismuth bar was hung between these poles. A modern photograph of a genuine 1845 object, so it is object-period-correct even though the exposure is recent.
- - Schematic of Faraday's 1845 electromagnet and disc. A line schematic of the 1845 electromagnet arrangement with the sectored disc between the poles. It makes the geometry legible in a way the photographs of the blackened iron core do not. Good as an explanatory beat next to the apparatus photograph.
- - Faraday, "On new magnetic actions, and on the magnetic condition of all matter" - openi…. The opening page of the Twenty-first Series of Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, printed by the Royal Society and headed "Received December 24, 1845 - Read January 8, 1846". Paragraph 2343 begins the continuation of "On new magnetic actions, and on the magnetic condition of all matter", the paper in which Faraday set out that ALL matter responds to a magnet, most of it by being repelled. This is the primary printed document of the discovery, from Faraday's own copy in the Burndy Library.
- - Michael Faraday, line engraving by J. Cook after H. Anelay. A 19th-century line engraving of Faraday by J. Cook after a drawing by Henry Anelay. Engravings like this were how Faraday's face circulated to the Victorian public while he was doing the diamagnetism work. Very high resolution (2362x3125) and cleanly period.
- - Faraday at work in his laboratory at the Royal Institution. A depiction of Faraday standing at his bench in the Royal Institution laboratory, from the Wellcome iconographic collections. Large (3700x2870) and atmospheric, showing the horseshoe of apparatus he worked between. Best used as the establishing shot for the November 1845 experiment.
- - Faraday's delineation of lines of magnetic force by iron filings. One of Faraday's own iron-filing figures, made 1851-1855, in which he fixed the pattern of magnetic lines of force onto paper. Diamagnetic bodies, in Faraday's language, were those that set themselves ACROSS the lines of force rather than along them - so these figures are the visual vocabulary of his theory. Made by Faraday himself, with brass, glass, ink, iron and paper.
- - Plate from Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity. A page image from Faraday's "Experimental Researches in Electricity", the collected series in which the diamagnetism work was published as Series XX and XXI. A genuine 19th-century printed page, 1216x1893.
- - Faraday lecturing at the Royal Institution, 27 December 1855. Alexander Blaikley's famous scene of Faraday lecturing at the Royal Institution on 27 December 1855, with Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales in the audience. Ten years after the diamagnetism discovery, this is Faraday at the height of his public authority. 4000x2957, the best free copy of the image.
- - Faraday lecturing before the Prince Consort (Wellcome copy). The Wellcome Collection's copy of the Faraday Christmas Lecture scene, catalogued to 16 February 1856. A large, clean 3372x2527 scan of the same iconic composition. Useful as a fallback if a different tonal treatment is wanted.
- - Photographic portrait of Michael Faraday. A photographic portrait of Faraday taken before his death in 1867, from the Dibner Library Scientific Identity collection at the Smithsonian. Photography rather than paint, so it reads as documentary rather than commemorative. Good for a later-life Faraday scene.
- - Faraday's laboratory, plate from Bence Jones's Life and Letters of Faraday. The plate of Faraday's laboratory published in 1870 in Bence Jones's "The Life and Letters of Faraday". It is the closest thing to an authorised depiction of Faraday's actual workspace, issued three years after his death. Period-correct engraving, not a modern reconstruction.
- - Faraday's original 1845 electromagnet at the Science Museum. A 1929 press photograph of the original electromagnet made for Faraday in 1845, then on show at the Science Museum in South Kensington. Shot for the Faraday centenary, it is itself now a historical document. At 4076x5220 it is the highest-resolution view of the actual apparatus available freely.
- - How did Michael Faraday invent?. The Royal Institution on Faraday’s method: no mathematics to speak of, an unmatched instinct for apparatus, and a willingness to hang anything he could find between the poles of a magnet to see what it did.
- - Discoveries from Faraday’s laboratory. The Royal Institution on the room where diamagnetism was found, and the way Faraday worked, the notebooks, the improvised apparatus, the habit of testing every substance he could reach.
