Annual Address. 



21 



Chemistry was at that time exciting great interest, and 

 Dr. Beck's courses of chemical lectures, conducted every 

 winter in the lecture room of the academy, was attended 

 not only by the students, but by all that was most' intelli- 

 gent and fashionable in the city. Henry, who had been 

 formerly a pupil in the Academy, was then Dr. Beck's 

 chemical assistant, and already an admirable experiment- 

 alist ; and he availed himself to the utmost of the advan- 

 tages thus afforded of prosecuting his investigations in 

 chemistry, electricity, and galvanism. Sir Humphrey 

 Davy's succession of brilliant discoveries through the aid 

 of the galvanic battery, had awakened the deepest enthu- 

 siasm in this country. In 1826, Henry was appointed to 

 the professorship of mathematics and natural philosophy 

 in the Academy, and we find him soon afterwards engaged 

 in his experiments in electro-magnetism, and our journals 

 contain a paper read by him before us in 1827, on some 

 modifications in electro-magnetic apparatus. From that 

 time until his acceptance of the chair of mathematics 

 and natural philosophy in Princeton College in 1832, we 

 find him prosecuting that remarkable course of original 

 investigations and discoveries in electro-magnetism, which 

 at the time excited our own deepest interest here and 

 throughout this country, and gave him at once a European 

 reputation. The discoveries of Oersted, Arago and Davy, 

 and especially those of Ampere, had made the subject one 

 of great and novel interest to men of science ; but at the 

 time of Professor Henry's investigations, not only were 

 the means of developing magnetism in soft iron to any 

 great degree very imperfectly understood, but the electro- 

 magnet as it then existed, was inapplicable to the trans- 

 mission of the power to a point at any great distance from 

 the operator. By his discoveries it was shown for the first 

 time, how a magnetic power far greater than any that had 

 before been supposed possible, could be obtained. At a 



