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same law holds for electric charges—laws curiously analogous to that of gravitation. In 1820, Oersted, a Dane, discovered that electric currents exert a force on magnets, and almost immediately afterwards the mathematical law of the force was correctly formulated by Ampere, a Frenchman, who also proved that two electric currents exerted forces on each other. "The experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, fullgrown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of Electricity.' It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics."[1]

The momentous laws of induction between currents and between currents and magnets were discovered by Michael Faraday in 183132. Faraday was asked: "What is the use of this discovery?" He answered: "What is the use of a child—it grows to be a man." Faraday's child has grown to be a man and is now the basis of all the modern applications

  1. ↑ Electricity and Magnetism, Clerk Maxwell. Vol. II., ch. iii.
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