Faraday showed that the amount of chemical action produced by electricity is fixed and definite.  In order to be able to measure the amount of this action, he invented an instrument which he called a voltameter, or a volta-electrometer.  It consisted of a simple device for measuring the amount of hydrogen and oxygen gases liberated by the passage of an electric current through water acidulated with sulphuric acid.  He showed, by numerous experiments, that the decomposition effected is invariably proportional to the amount of electricity passing; that variations in the size of the electrodes, in the pressure, or in the degree of dilution of the electrolyte, had nothing to do with the result, and that therefore a voltameter could be employed to determine the amount of electricity passing in a given circuit.  He also demonstrated that when a current is passed through different electrolytes (compound substances decomposed by the passage of electricity), the amount of the decompositions are chemically equivalent to each other.

The extent of Faraday’s work in the electro-chemical field may be judged by considering some of the terms he proposed for its phenomena, most of which, with some trifling exceptions, are still in use.  It was he who gave the name electrolysis to decomposition by the electric current; he also proposed to call the wires, or conductors connected with the battery, or other electric source, the electrodes, naming that one which was connected with the positive terminal, the anode, and that one connected with the negative terminal, the cathode.  He called the separate atoms or groups of atoms into which bodies undergoing electrolysis are separated, the radicals, or ions, and named the electro-positive ions, which appear at the cathode, the kathions, and the electro-negative radicals which appear at the anode, the anions.

There were many other researches made by Faraday, such as his experiments on disruptive electric discharges, his investigations on the electric eel, his many researches on the phenomena both of frictional electricity and of the voltaic pile, his investigations on the contact and chemical theories of the voltaic pile, and those on chemical decomposition by frictional electricity; these are but some of the mere important of them.  Those we have already discussed will, however, amply suffice to show the value of his work.  Rather than take up any others, let us inquire what influence, if any, the various groups of discoveries we have already discussed have exerted on the electric arts and sciences in our present time.  What practical results have attended these discoveries?  What actual, useful, commercial machines have been based on them?  What useful processes or industries have grown out of them?

And, first, as to actual commercial machines.  These researches not only led to the production of dynamo-electric machines, but, in point of fact, Faraday actually produced the first dynamo.  A dynamo-electric machine, as is well known, is a machine by means of which mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy, by causing conductors to cut through, or be cut through by, lines of magnetic force; or, briefly, it is a machine by means of which electricity is readily obtained from magnetism.