Daily History Challenge · No. 14 · Sunday 12 July 2026 · Gauntlet
Puzzle No. 14: Gauntlet
The Sunday Gauntlet: three before or after calls, four events to order and a final When? on Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
Act 1: Chain, against The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greek (250 BCE)
After The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greek
After The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greek
After The Septuagint: Hebrew scripture translated into Greek
Act 2: Order, earliest first
Act 3: When?
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.