Page:Hans Christian Ørsted - The Soul in Nature - Horner - 1852.djvu/18

Rh experiments proved the truth of his suspicion that the voltaic current had an influence on the magnetised needle. He thought with reason, that exactly as a body, when penetrated by a strong current of electricity, radiates heat and light on every side, such might also be produced by magnetic action. His experience that lightning altered the poles in magnetic needles, which it had not struck, seemed to confirm this. But the true direction of the effect was still undetermined. He however succeeded in fully establishing it. In his lecture, when the decision of his long-cherished anticipation approached with unavoidable reality, interrupting himself for a moment, he immediately invited his audience to a practical trial; and even the first experiment was successful, though the effect was too feeble to give at once full validity to the law. It was, however, perceived that the glass was penetrated by the electric current, as well as by every magnetic effect.

For two centuries the opinion had been alternately accepted and rejected, that electricity and magnetism are produced by the same forces; yet all endeavours to prove the accordance had been in vain. Oersted now completed the evidence by his renewed experiments during several months with a very large galvanic chain of copper cells, of zinc plates, and a weak acid; that there is always a magnetic circulation round the electric conductor, and that the electric current, in accordance with a certain law, always exercises determined and similar impressions on the direction of the magnetic needle, even when it does not pass through the needle, but near it. Electro-magnetism was thus introduced into nature, not as an exception, but as a universal force of nature, which may be revealed in all bodies. A concise Latin account of the discovery of the preceding experiments was simultaneously sent to all the European capitals of Science, and Oersted enjoyed the greatest and best reward; namely, that his