74 Biographical Notice of Alexander Volta. 



what great theoretical and experimental discoveries the pile 

 has been the origin. 



M. Ampere had for a long time meditated on this subject, 

 and he appeared only to wait for a favorable opportunity, to 

 give vent to the results of his meditations, when the discov- 

 ery of Oersted suddenly appeared, he immediately availed 

 himself of it, and by his labors, laid the foundation of a new 

 science. Whatever may be the present and future opinion 

 relative to the ingenious theory which this philosopher has 

 sought to establish, the numerous facts by which he has en- 

 riched science, will always remain a monument of the servi- 

 ces which he has rendered, and if some difficult minds should 

 find his explanations insufficient, his hypotheses a little too 

 bold, let them not forget a least, that abstractly from their 

 intrinsic merit, it is these explanations, these suppositions 

 which have given birth to numerous experimental discoveries. 



The first step that M. Ampere made on electro dynamics, 

 was to discover, that, independently of the influence which 

 the electric currents exercise upon the magnetic needle, 

 they exert also an action upon one another, the law of which, 

 he determined. He soon went farther ; instead of imputing, 

 as all other philosophers at first did, the influence which a 

 conductor of voltaic electricity exercises upon a magnet, to 

 a magnetism impressed into this conductor, by the current, 

 he shewed with much sagacity that the magnet itself is noth- 

 ing more than a union of electric currents, and that the ac- 

 tion discovered by Oersted is only a more complicated case 

 of the simple action of two currents upon one another. As 

 a proof of the identity which he established between mag- 

 netism and electricity, M. Ampere shows that all phenomena 

 relative to the action of magnets and currents, even the sin- 

 gular movements of continual rotation discovered by Mr. 

 Faraday, vvith the action of magnets upon one another 

 may be explained, by supposing that the latter are formed by 

 an assemblage of electric currents disposed agreeably to a 

 certain order which he was enabled to imitate, so as to obtain 

 a real magnet, only by means of electricity. 



Lastly, he has gone stifl farther, in shewing that an elec- 

 tric current possesses, like the compass needle, the property 

 of assuming a constant direction by the action of the ter- 

 restrial globe. He has subjected this action of the globe, 

 both upon the moveable current and upon the magnet, to 

 that which an assemblage of electric currents would exercise 



