It is a most elaborate and conscientious description of processes, precautions, and results: the details were so exact and so minute, and the paper consequently so long, that three successive sittings of the Royal Society were taken up by the delivery of the lecture.[3] This glass did not turn out to be of important practical use, but it happened afterwards to be the foundation of two of Faraday's greatest discoveries.[4] The experiments here referred to were commenced at the Falcon Glass Works, on the premises of Messrs.

Green and Pellatt, but Faraday could not conveniently attend to them there.

In 1827, therefore, a furnace was erected in the yard of the Royal Institution; and it was at this time, and with a view of assisting him at the furnace, that Faraday engaged Sergeant Anderson, of the Royal Artillery, the respectable, truthful, and altogether trustworthy man whose appearance here is so fresh in our memories.

Anderson continued to be the reverential helper of Faraday and the faithful servant of this Institution for nearly forty years.[5] In 1831 Faraday published a paper, 'On a peculiar class of Optical Deceptions,' to which I believe the beautiful optical toy called the Chromatrope owes its origin.

In the same year he published a paper on Vibrating Surfaces, in which he solved an acoustical problem which, though of extreme simplicity when solved, appears to have baffled many eminent men.