ABSTRACT
Michael Faraday, the third son of a journeyman blacksmith, was born on 22 September 1791 in Newington Butts on the outskirts of London. His early education was extremely simple, consisting of little more than the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. At the age of thirteen he became an errand boy to Mr Riebau, a kindly French émigré bookbinder and bookseller, who later took him on as an apprentice. In the years that followed he read the books that he was given to bind. One of them was a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd edition, 1797, where he came across the article by the wayward chemist, Mr James Tytler on electricity, a topic which captured his interest. He also bound and read Conversations on Chemistry by Mrs Marcet, the wife of a Swiss doctor, who had published her book in 1809 for audiences created by Humphry Davy.
