CHAPTER 3.
Discovery of Magneto-electricity: Explanation of Argo's magnetism of rotation: Terrestrial magneto-electric induction: The extra current.
The work thus referred to, though sufficient of itself to secure no mean scientific reputation, forms but the vestibule of Faraday's achievements.

He had been engaged within these walls for eighteen years.
During part of the time he had drunk in knowledge from Davy, and during the remainder he continually exercised his capacity for independent inquiry.

In 1831 we have him at the climax of his intellectual strength, forty years of age, stored with knowledge and full of original power.
Through reading, lecturing, and experimenting, he had become thoroughly familiar with electrical science: he saw where light was needed and expansion possible.

The phenomena of ordinary electric induction belonged, as it were, to the alphabet of his knowledge: he knew that under ordinary circumstances the presence of an electrified body was sufficient to excite, by induction, an unelectrified body.

He knew that the wire which carried an electric current was an electrified body, and still that all attempts had failed to make it excite in other wires a state similar to its own.
What was the reason of this failure?
Faraday never could work from the experiments of others, however clearly described.