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Updated: June 1, 2025
Oersted was on the outlook for the required clue, and a happy chance is said to have rewarded him. His experiment is shown in figure 29, where a wire conveying a current of electricity flowing in the direction of the arrow is held over a pivoted magnetic needle so that the current flows from south to north.
Among the names distinguished in science are those of Malte Brun in geography; Rask, Grundtvig, Molbech, Warsaae, Rafn, Finn Magnusen and others in philology and literary antiquities. Of the two brothers Oersted, one, a lawyer and statesman, has done much to establish the principles of state economy, while the discoveries of the other entitle him to the highest rank in physical science.
It became practicable, however, when Oersted discovered that a magnetic needle could be swung to one side or the other by an electric current passing near it. The illustrious Laplace was the first to suggest a telegraph on this principle.
In contriving the electric telegraph, Wheatstone, an Englishman, Oersted, a Dane, and Henry, an American, had each an important part. The most simple and efficient form of the telegraphic instrument is admitted to be due to the inventive sagacity of Morse . His instrument was first put in use in 1844.
Among them I can pause to mention only those of Volta, the Italian, to whose discoveries the battery is due; Oersted, the Dane, who first discovered the magnetic properties of the electric current; Ampere and Arago, the Frenchmen, who prosecuted still further and most successfully similar researches; then Sturgeon, the Englishman, who may be said to have made the first electro-magnet; next, and not least illustrious among these illustrious men, our countryman Henry, who first showed the practicability of producing electro-magnetic effects by means of the galvanic current at distances infinitely great; and finally Steinheil, the German, who, after the invention of the Telegraph in all its material parts was complete, taught, in 1837, the use of the ground as part of the circuit.
Following them came a group of master builders, among whom may be mentioned: Volta of Italy, Oersted of Denmark, Ampere of France, Ohm of Germany, Faraday of England, and Joseph Henry of America. Among these men, who were, it should be noted, theoretical investigators, rather than practical inventors like Morse, or Bell, or Edison, the American Joseph Henry ranks high.
Although, perhaps, I should not be justified in comparing Oersted with Newton, yet he also discovered what are termed "new" laws of nature, in a manner at once precise, profound, and amazing, and which opened a new field of research to many of the most distinguished philosophers of that time, who were soon engaged in experimenting in the same direction, and from whose investigations arose a new science, which was called "electro-dynamics."
The bare enumeration of the names of the men who were the great lights of science in the latter part of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth century, of Herschel, of Laplace, of Young, of Fresnel, of Oersted, of Cavendish, of Lavoisier, of Davy, of Lamarck, of Cuvier, of Jussieu, of Decandolle, of Werner and of Hutton, suffices to indicate the strength of physical science in the age immediately preceding that of which I have to treat.
Again, the discovery of voltaic electricity, and the marvellous development of knowledge, in that field, effected by such men as Davy, Faraday, Oersted, Ampère, and Melloni, had brought to light a number of facts which tended to show that the so-called 'forces' at work in light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, in chemical and in mechanical operations, were intimately, and, in various cases, quantitatively related.
It was made on the 29th of August, 1831, and should be regarded as inspired by the great discovery made by Oersted in 1820, of the relations existing between the voltaic pile and electro-magnetism.
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