226 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



ber of plates so as to give 'projectile' force; in the second, ii must 

 be formed of a single pair." 



The importance <>l this discovery can hardly be overestimated. 

 The magnetic "spool" of fine wire, of a length — tens and even 

 hundreds of times that ever before employed for this purpose, — 



was in itself a gift to sciei which really forms an epoch in the 



history of electro-magnetism. It is not too much to say that 

 almost every advancement which has been made in this fruitful 

 branch of physics since the time of Sturgeon's happy improve- 

 ment, from the earliest researches of Faraday downward, has 

 been directly indebted to Henry's magnets. By means of the 

 Henry "spool" the magnet almost at a bound was developed from 



a feeble childhood to a vigorous man! 1. And so rapidly and 



generally was the new form introduced abroad among experimen- 

 ters, few of whom hail ever seen the papers of Henry, that proba- 

 bly very lew indeed have been aware to whom they were really 

 indebted for this familiar and powerful instrumentality, lint the 

 historic fail remains, that prior to Henry's experiments in 1829, 

 no one on either hemisphere had ever thought of winding the limbs 

 of an electro-magnet on the principle of the " bobbin," and not till 

 after the publication of Henry's method in January of 1831, was 

 it ever employed by any European physicist."!" 



But in addition to this large gift to science, Henry (as we have 

 seen) has the pre-eminent claim to popular gratitude of having 

 first practically worked out the differing functions of two entirely 

 different kinds of electro-magnet: the one surrounded with numer- 

 ous coils of no great length, de-ip/nated' by him the "ijuantity" 

 magnet, the other surrounded with a continuous coil of very great 

 length, designated by him the "intensity" magnet.| The latter 



*Silliman"s Am. Jour. Sci. Jan. 1S31, vol. xix. pp. J03, KM. 



[■Henry's "si 1" magnet appears to have been introduced into France by 



Pouii/let in IS32. Xouveau litilietin des Sciences: public par la Society Philoma- 



tique de Paris. S& e of 2.'5d June, ISG2, p. 127. In Pouillet's Elements •/<■ J'Iiji- 



sique Experimental, lima edition, published in ls:;7, (vol. i. p. 572,) tin- date of this 

 magnet Is lnadvcrtentl; given as 1S31; an inaccuracy which though unimportant, 

 is perpetuated in every subsequent edition of that popular text-book. In the 

 second edition, published in 1S32, no allusion to tin' magnet occurs. 



"In describing tin- n'sults of my experiments tin- terms 'intensity' and 

 'quantity' magnets were introduced t" avoid circumlocution, and were intended 

 to ti.- used merely in :i technical sense. Bj the intensity magnet I designated a 



