Beschreibung:

Faraday (Michael, 1791-1867). An iron filings diagram fixed on waxed blue paper, circa 1850s, 9.5 x 14 cm, tipped onto a contemporary album leaf and neatly inscribed in ink beneath, 'Lines of magnetic [force] by Faraday given me by Mr Sydney on my visit to him on June 21st 1872' (Qty: 1) The Royal Institution own a laboratory notebook of Michael Faraday's which contains similar iron filing diagrams produced by him in 1851 to demonstrate magnetic lines of force. He demonstrated their existence by coating sheets of paper with a thin layer of melted wax, pulling the iron filings poured over the top with bar magnets held beneath the paper. The iron filings were attracted to the magnetic forces around each magnet. The example offered here shows two circles with line patterns between and around them. The recipient from Faraday was the Reverend Edwin Sidney (c.1798-1872), Rector of Little Cornard, 1847-1872, and lecturer at the Royal Institution and elsewhere. Sidney knew Faraday quite well and a number of letters from Faraday to Sidney are in Michael Faraday's Correspondence, edited by Frank James at the Royal Institution, and now available online. Faraday gave these iron filing diagrams to friends and colleagues and there are many examples in the Royal Institution archives and others elsewhere. However, the identity of the recipient of this example from Sidney is unknown and examples offered for sale are very rare.