ABSTRACT
Faraday’s early career at the Royal Institution was very much taken up with chemical analyses brought from a wide variety of sources. He also began to give practical assistance to both private and government organisations. A month later, in sending another batch of analyses to Josiah Wedgwood, Faraday took advantage of the opportunity to enquire about the design of furnaces used to make pottery. He needed the information to help him with a project he was involved in to investigate the hardening of steel: Mr Faraday sends Mr Wedgwood the analyses of the clays and would be obliged if Mr Wedgwood could at a convenient opportunity give him short notices of their localities, times of discovery and relative utility. In 1820, Mr Stodart, who kept a shop selling cutlery and razors in the Strand commissioned the Royal Institution to analyse, and attempt to reproduce, a specially hard steel imported from India called Wootz.
