oersted

Updated: June 1, 2025

With, perhaps, the single exception of the discovery by Oersted, in 1820, of the invariable relation existing between an electric current and magnetism, this discovery of Faraday may be justly regarded as the greatest in this domain of physical science. These two master minds in scientific research wonderfully complemented each other.

John Lord - Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14 : The New Era; A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents

"The first experiments in connection with the subject which I am undertaking to explain," wrote Oersted, "were made during the course of lectures which I held last winter on electricity and magnetism. From those experiments it appeared that the magnetic needle could be moved from its position by means of a galvanic battery one with a closed galvanic circuit.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 3

Thus what had escaped Oersted throughout his planned researches namely, that the magnetic force which accompanies an electric current must be sought in a direction at right angles to the current a fortuitous event enabled him to detect.

Ernst Lehrs - Man or Matter

One day devoted to seeing Germany, and one for the North, the country of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, the land of the old heroes and the young Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home. The geysers burn no more, Hecla is an extinct volcano, but the rocky island is still fixed in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual monument of legend and poetry.

H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen - Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

Since a magnetic pole tends to move in the direction of the lines of force, we now see why a north or south pole tends to move ROUND a current, and why a compass needle tries to set itself at right angles to a current, as in the original experiment of Oersted.

John Munro - The Story of Electricity

After spending some hours in Thorwaldsen's Museum I went to see the study of Oersted, where his most important discovery of the deflection of the needle by a galvanic current was made, which laid the foundation of the science of electro-magnetism, and without which my invention could not have been made. It is now a drawing school. I sat at the table where he made his discovery.

Samuel F. B. (Samuel Finley Breese) Morse - Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume II