In common with the other scientific men of his time, Faraday believed that since the flow of an electric current invariably produced magnetism, so magnetism should, in its turn, be capable of producing electricity.  Many investigators before Faraday’s time had endeavored to solve this problem, but it was reserved to Faraday alone to be successful.  Since success in this investigation resulted from some experiments he made while endeavoring to obtain inductive action on a quiescent circuit from a neighboring circuit through which an electric current was flowing, we will first briefly examine this experiment.  All his experiments in this direction were at first unsuccessful.  He passed an electric current through a circuit, which was located close to another circuit containing a galvanometer,—­a device for showing the presence of an electric current and measuring its strength,—­but failed to obtain any result.  He looked for such results only when the current had been fully established in the active circuit.  Undismayed by failure, he reasoned that probably effects were present, but that they were too small to be observed owing to the feeble inducing current employed.  He therefore increased the strength of the current in the active wire; but still with no results.

Again and again he interrogates nature, but unsuccessfully.  At last he notices that there is a slight movement of the galvanometer needle at the moment of making and breaking the circuit.  Carefully repeating his experiments in the light of this observation, he discovers the important fact that it is only at the moment a current is increasing or decreasing in strength—­at the moment of making or breaking a circuit—­that the active circuit is capable of producing a current in a neighboring inactive circuit by induction.  This was an important discovery, and in the light of his after-knowledge was correctly regarded as a solution of the production of electricity from magnetism.

Observing that the galvanometer needle momentarily swings in one direction on making the circuit, and in the opposite direction on breaking it, he establishes the fact that the current induced on making flows in the opposite direction to the inducing current, and that induced on breaking flows in the same direction as the inducing current.

Having thus established the fact of current induction, he makes the step of substituting magnets for active circuits; a simple step in the light of our present knowledge, but a giant stride at that time.  Remembering that current induction, or, as he called it, voltaic current induction, takes place only while some effect produced by the current is either increasing or decreasing, he moves coils of insulated wire towards or from magnet poles, or magnet poles towards or from coils of wire, and shows that electric currents are generated in the coils while either the coils or the magnets are in motion, but cease to be produced as soon as the motion ceases.  Moreover, these magnetically induced currents differ in no respects from other currents,—­for example, those produced by the voltaic pile,—­since, like the latter, they produce sparks, magnetize bars of steel, or deflect the needle of a galvanometer.  In this manner Faraday solved the great problem.  He had produced electricity directly from magnetism!