Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction

Date

29 August 1831

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Britain (London)

Era

Modern

Significance

On 29 August 1831, working at the Royal Institution in London, Michael Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction by winding two insulated coils on opposite sides of an iron ring: switching current on or off in one coil induced a momentary current in the other, with no direct electrical connection between them.

Further experiments showed that moving a magnet through a coil, or a coil through a magnetic field, likewise generated a current, establishing that a changing magnetic field produces an electromotive force. Faraday disclosed his results to the Royal Society in November 1831 and published them in the Philosophical Transactions in 1832. The discovery united electricity and magnetism into a single field of electromagnetism and provided the physical principle behind electric generators, transformers, and motors. Faraday's notion of lines of force and fields, developed without advanced mathematics, later inspired James Clerk Maxwell's formal field theory. Few experimental findings of the century did more to shape both physics and the coming age of electrical power and technology.

Empires active in 29 August 1831

• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
  24 November 1859
• John Snow traces cholera to the Broad Street pump
  1854
• Opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway
  27 September 1825
• Dalton publishes his atomic theory
  1808
• Third Plague Pandemic begins in Yunnan
  1855 (origin in Yunnan); global spread from 1894
• Maxwell formulates the theory of electromagnetism
  1865–1873

Also relevant

• Stephenson's Rocket and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway
  15 September 1830

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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