236 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL LABOURS TO 1860. 



theory of Faraday suffices for the explanation of the 

 phenomena. I then carried this theory further in 

 several directions and solved problems by the help 

 of it. as e. g. the calculation of the capacity of a 

 battery formed of any number of Leyden jars of diffe- 

 rent capacity placed one behind another, a problem 

 which up to that time had not been solved. Unfor- 

 tunately I did not find the necessary leisure before 

 the spring of 1857 to prepare my work for the press. 

 Meanwhile eminent English physicists, like Sir William 

 Thomson and Maxwell, had anticipated sundry of my 

 scientific results; in particular the formulae, given by 

 Thomson, for the capacity of jar wires and the retar- 

 dation of the current were the same as those which I 

 had arrived at in a quite different and more elemen- 

 tary way. Maxwell has in his masterly works ela- 

 borated Faraday's theory in strict mathematical fashion, 

 and proved that it is everywhere in complete harmony 

 with the theory of potentials. We are therefore com- 

 pletely warranted in regarding with Faraday electric 

 distribution as an action propagated from molecule to 

 molecule, but not combined with a direct action at a 

 distance, for only one of these processes can actually 

 take place. 



At the close of the above-mentioned paper I de- 

 scribed the apparatus known by the name of the Siemens' 

 ozone tube, and explained the theory of its action. I 

 succeeded with its help in converting oxygen into ozone 

 by electrolysis. There is still a great future in store for 

 this apparatus, as it enables us to subject gases to 



