Faraday to James David Forbes   19 May 1832

R Institution | May 19th 1832

My dear Sir

I beg to thank you sincerely for your papers which I have read with great pleasure1 & I beg to thank you also for endeavouring to secure to me in the midst of the confusion that has arisen what you consider my due2[.]

I was not aware you had used a natural magnet for you had not told me your method of proceeding and in some notes which I sent to the Phil Mag to accompany a translation of Nobili's & Antinori's paper I had supposed I was the first that used a natural Magnet[.] That I can correct in the proofs3[.] But I want to tell you that immediately after writing to you last time4 I made the expt at Woolwich & also at home and with a very simple form of apparatus5 which enabled me to shew the spark to at least 400 persons at once as often as I pleased. I shewed it to our members in the Lecture room last Friday week6 & upon trial I found the spark was so bright it could be seen in broad day light in any part of the room. The loadstone I used did not lift more than 25 or 30 pounds[.]

Mr Ritchie on the same evening shewed his arrangement to fire oxygen & hydrogen by a comparatively small horse shoe magnet7[.]

My arrangement is much simpler than any I have yet found or seen of[.] You will see it in the next Phil Mag8[.]

I am Dear Sir | Very Truly Yours | M. Faraday

J.D. Forbes Esq | &c &c &c


Address: James D. Forbes Esq | &c &c &c | Greenhill | Edinburgh

1
Probably Forbes, J.D. (1832a, b).
2
See especially Forbes, J.D. (1832b), 203-5.
3
Nobili and Antinori (1832), 405-6. Faraday's note on these pages suggests that the proof change was made. He acknowledged the priority of Nobili, Antinori and Forbes in obtaining a spark from a permanent magnet.
4
That is letter 572 written from Brighton on 26 April 1832.
5
This appears to refer to experiments which Faraday dated 8 and 9 February 1832, Faraday, Diary, 1: 423-7, but which from the evidence of this letter and from their sequence in the Diary immediately following an entry for 17 April 1832, suggest that they should have been dated 8 and 9 May 1832.
6
See "Royal Institution", Lit.Gaz., 19 May 1832, p.313 for a report of the experiment.
7
See ibid. for a report of this experiment.
8
This refers to Faraday's note to Nobili and Antinori (1832), 405-6 where he describes the apparatus.

Please cite as “Faraday0581,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0581