316 J/r. John Allen Harker [Feb. 9, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 9, 1912. 



Sir William Crookes, O.M. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., Honorary 

 Secretary and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



John Allen Harker, Esq.. D.Sc. F.R.S. 



Very High Temperatures. 



[abridged.] 



Exactly a century ago this month Michael Faraday entered the 

 Eoyal Institution for the first time. He was then a youth of twenty, 

 in the last year of his apprenticeship to a bookbinder in Blandford 

 Street. Among the meagre records we possess of Faraday's early 

 Kfe we find the following : — 



" I had the good fortune, through the kindness of Mr. Dance, 

 who was a customer in my master's shop and also a member of the 

 Royal Institution, to hear four of the last lectures of Sir Humphry 

 Davy in that locality. The dates of these lectures were Feb. 29, 

 March 14, April 8 and 10, 1812." It was Faraday's habit to occupy 

 the seat in the gallery over the clock. He made very full notes of 

 the lectures, and afterwards AATote them up, indexed and bound them 

 with his own hands into a volume of ?)00 pages, which is now pre- 

 served at the Royal Institution. 



Some months later Faraday writes : " Under the encouragement 

 of Mr. Dance I wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, sending, as a proof of 

 my earnestness, the notes I had taken of his last four lectures. The 

 reply was immediate, kind and favourable." 



In March 1813, apparently largely on the strength of the impres- 

 sion made upon Davy by tkih ^-olame of notes, Faraday was engaged 

 as assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution at a salary of 

 25s. a week, with two rooms at the top of the house. 



The first lecture of Davy's course referred to was on " Radiant 

 Matter," and dealt, among other things, with the action of electric 

 sparks on gases. Ever since Volta's discovery in 1800 Davy had 

 been occupied with the study of the pile and the effect of the new 

 currents in producing heat and chemical change, thus leading up to 

 his decomposition of the fixed alkalis and the isolation of potassium 

 in 1807. 



Following on this discovery, Davy proposed that a fund "should 

 be raised by subscription for the construction of a large and powerful 

 battery, worthy of a national establishment, and capable of promoting 



