ABSTRACT
A close associate of Wheatstone, Michael Faraday is best known for his contributions to the electrical sciences. Following Danish chemist Hans Christian orsted’s observation in 1820 that an electric current passing through copper wire could cause a magnetized needle to move, Faraday extended this connecting of electric and magnetic phenomena with his discovery of electromagnetic rotation in 1821. Historians have often written this acoustic work off as essentially frivolous and something of a distraction to Faraday’s wider philosophical interests, but it is significant that his work on measuring impulses through fluids, forming crispations, concluded in July 1831, just a month before he first successfully induced electricity from magnetism and movement. After 1831, Faraday would focus his research on electrical and magnetic phenomena, but his earlier acoustic work provided an important context to these subsequent, more celebrated, experimental observations.
