36 FINDS THE SPEED LIMITED. 



that the advantages of the close arrangement of electro- 

 magnets are not such as I anticipated." His six months' 

 work had thus ended in complete disappointment as 

 regards the results he expected, but he is not discouraged. 

 Here is where the character of the man, or rather 

 boy, comes in. Being assured of the soundness of the 

 reasoning, as far as it went, on which his anticipations 

 were based, and also of the means he had taken to 

 put these anticipations to the test, he recognises in the 

 result of his six months' work a proof of further causes 

 of which he was ignorant. He is not disillusionised in his 

 view as to the possibilities of the electro-magnetic engine, 

 but he sees that he has not fully mastered the principles on 

 which its improvement depends. " I was desirous," he 

 proceeds, " before attempting to make another engine, to 

 satisfy myself how far it was possible to increase the 

 velocity of rotation, which was only 3^ feet per second in 

 the above trial. Now of the many things which limit the 

 velocity, the resistance which iron opposes to the instanta- 

 neous induction of magnetism is of considerable importance. 

 I think I shall be able to show how this may be obviated in 

 some measure." And he then proceeds in this and his third 

 letter, March 27, 1839, to describe experiments with other 

 engines in which he uses wire magnets and batteries of 

 different intensity, and then experiments on the lifting 

 power of various forms from which he obtained somewhat 

 unexpected results, which were of great interest in the study of 

 electro-magnetism. 



He had then been at work 14 months from the publi- 

 cation of his first paper, and had apparently found very 

 little to encourage him in the avowed object of his 

 research. It appears, however, from his next paper, 



