The Birthplace of Michael Faraday’s Big Ideas
A peek inside the laboratory of the chemist and physicist, whose experiments helped scientists see the link between electricity and magnetism
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/marina-koren-240.jpg)
Michael Faraday's book binding shop. (Courtesy of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.)
As a young boy, Michael Faraday worked in a bookbinding shop in London, reading every book that he bound. By 22, he was a laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, where he would become England’s premier physicist and chemist in the 1800s. In this laboratory, arranged as it was in the 1850s, Faraday made discoveries crucial for bringing electricity into the realm of practical use in technology. In 1831, he discovered electromagnetic induction, proving that electricity could be generated from magnetism.
This image above presents Faraday’s laboratory as it would have been seen in the 1850s. His lab currently resides at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, where it is on display for public viewing.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/marina-koren-240.jpg)