ABSTRACT
Wollaston was the first to deduce the possibility of electromagnetic rotation. He perceived that there was a power not directed to or from the wire in the voltaic circuit, but acting circumferentially round its axis. He wagered that he would make the wire revolve on itself; the wager was open. Davy was President of the Royal Society; Warburton and other friends of Wollaston were certainly incensed against his protégé. In subsequent publications various statements were made in which Wol-laston’s expectation was noticed, and in 1823, upon Faraday’s proposed election to the Royal Society, an historical statement was made by him with reference to Wollaston in the Royal Institution Journal. Keats in 1819 built his epic fragment of Hyperion on the idea that the new gods, by exceeding the old in glory, rightly vanquished them. Faraday had been working on chlorine; but it was Davy who had suggested the particular experiment which Paris witnessed.
