Michael Faraday was born in Michael Faraday was born in
Newington Butts,Newington Butts, South London, South London,
England, September 1791. England, September 1791.
He wasn’t from the richest family, his He wasn’t from the richest family, his
father was a blacksmith and his father was a blacksmith and his
mother was the daughter of a farmer, mother was the daughter of a farmer,
but he got basic education.but he got basic education.
•At the age of 14 he left school to become a
book binder’s apprentice for over seven
years. During that period he educated
himself by reading books.
•In 1812 he went to 4 lectures of the
chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal
Institution, there he took notes of what
Humphrey was saying carefully, bound
them in leather and sent it to Davy with a
job application to be a his assistant, but
Davy had an assistant already.
•Later Davy hired Faraday as his assistant
because he fired the former one for
fighting.
•Davy and Faraday went on a trip around
Europe where they met many other famous
chemists. He married Sarah Barnard, that
he met when attending a Sandemanian
church.
•A Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted
discovered that an electric current
produced a magnetic field. Since Faraday
was back home in England he began doing
experiments to investigate this.
•He built a device that included a hinged
wire, a chemical battery and a magnet.
When he turned on the current, a magnetic
field was set up in the wire, and it began to
spin around the magnet. The electric
current converted to magnetism. Right then
Faraday invented the electric motor.
•Faraday then invented another device
called the Transformer. This device aimed to
convert magnetism back to electricity, but it
partially worked.
Faraday decided to reverse an experiment
done by Dominique Arago. Arago had
discovered that a rotating copper disk
diverted a magnetic needle. This was
magnetic induction. In 1831 Faraday took
a copper disk and spun it between the
poles of a permanent magnet. This set up
an electric current in the disk which could
be passed through a wire and put to work,
as long as the wheel spun, current was
produced. This experiment produced tone
of he greatest electrical invention in
history: the electric generator. It took 50
years and other inventions to make
generators practical, but Faraday had
directed the way.
Faraday discovered the magnetic lines of
force," the compound benzene, how to
liquify various gasses, and the laws of
electrolysis. He developed the concept of a
field a force, magnetism, electric fields,
gravity that spreads throughout space
and is produced by magnets or electric
charge or, in the case of gravity, mass.
James Clerk Maxwell later developed his
famous equations describing
electromagnetism using this concept,
acknowledging his debt to Faraday
On August 25, 1867, Faraday died at
Hampton Court, Middlesex, England.