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Description: | Copper disc is allowed to rotate in the gap between the poles of the magnet this produces an electrical current. Contacts made more conducting by the application of mercury . Large wooden disk with wooden handle at the opposite end to the copper disk. In clunky style of Faraday's Royal Institution demonstration apparatus.
"Faraday's Disc - The First Dynamo James Clerk Maxwell's unsurpassed synthesis of the laws of electricity and magnetism were explicitly based on Michael Faraday's series of publications Experimental Researches in Electricity. In demitting office from Marischal College in 1860, Maxwell left behind as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the new unified University of Aberdeen David Thomson of King's College, said by one biographer to be a cousin of Faraday. Students of electricity will have heard of a Faraday cage and Faraday's disc. The latter was the first dynamo ever invented, described by Faraday in Experimental Researches in 1831. The device consists of a copper disc that can be rotated in the narrow gap between the poles of a magnet. Contacts near the centre and edge of the disc (made more conducting by the application of mercury) develop a voltage between them. By using a sensitive voltmeter Faraday was able to dispense with the laboratory magnet and use only the Earth's natural magnetic field. Although brilliantly innovative, the dynamo in this form was not developed commercially. Our device, which looks more functional than aesthetic, is a nineteenth-century piece with an appearance quite in keeping with some of Faraday's own simple equipment still to be seen at The Royal Institution."
Author: Reid,John.S Date: 1991 Purpose: University.Newsletter | License: | http://www.abdn.ac.uk/historic/Copyright_terms_conditions.shtml | Publisher: | ABDNP University of Aberdeen, Natural Philosophy Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments | Rights holder: | 47718 | Temporal: | 1840-1899 | Source: | University of Aberdeen | Identifier: | http://calms.abdn.ac.uk/Geology/dserve.e... | Go to resource |
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