The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire.
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![produced, moving in the same direction. Now :\vhy do the different effects depend upon the manner of closing the circuit? This question once satisfactorily answered, we shall be much wiser, than we are now about the subject; but I suspect, it will be a difficult task to get up such an answer. It is not beyond possibility, that our phenomenon is independent of an electric current, though one is always accompanied by the other; and it is, perhaps this very circumstance that renders the tracing of its cause so very difficult. If it should be found to be im- possible to explain the excitation of the peculiar state of iron and the destruction of it by the action of a current, then I am afraid, we shall be obliged to look out for another hypothesis, which may, perhaps, postulate a new agency different from Electricity for explaining the facts in question. But may heaven preserve us from more agencies, we have still enough of them. Up to this present moment, I have not yet received the papers, which you were so kind to dispatch for me some time ago. Shall I, perhaps, apply to the british ambassador at Bern,^ to whom they have most likely been sent? Before closing this letter, I take the liberty to ask you a favo[u]r. Our Establishment wants to get a good magnetic- electrical Machine, by means of which the principal experiments on Magneto-electricity may easily be made in classes. Now if it be not too much asked, the Committee of our Museum should feel themselves laid under great obligations to you, would you be so kind as to order such an apparatus to be sent to us by a Londoner instrument-maker. Excuse my long letter and accept kindly the assurance of my being Yours very trul}' Bale Nov. 26th 1836. C. F. Schoenbein.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2192899x_0038.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
