Faraday Makes Electricity from Magnetism
Next: August 29, 2027
The quiet start of the electric age.
The story
Where it comes from
This Story marks the anniversary of 29 August 1831, when Michael Faraday, working in his basement laboratory at the Royal Institution in London, first made electricity from magnetism. Eleven years earlier Hans Christian Ørsted had shown that an electric current could produce magnetism, and Faraday had spent the 1820s looking for the reverse. He wound two separate coils of copper wire on opposite sides of an iron ring. When he connected one coil to a battery, a brief current flowed in the other. He had discovered electromagnetic induction.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance. Faraday's original ring, which the Royal Institution describes as the first electric transformer, is on display in the Faraday Museum there, and his laboratory diary for that day survives. Anyone can mark the anniversary by looking at the chargers and transformers around them and remembering where the idea began.
Did you know
- Winding the coils and insulating them with cotton was slow work, and probably took him about ten working days.
- Some of the wire he used had been made for bonnets.
- A few weeks later, on 1 October 1831, he produced a spark by induction for the first time.
Coming up next
- Mary Shelley's Birthday · August 30, 2027
- Hari Merdeka · August 31, 2027
- International Day for People of African Descent · August 31, 2027
- World Letter Writing Day · September 1, 2027
- International Cabernet Day · September 2, 2027
- World Coconut Day · September 2, 2027