Note 28 — Chapter IV · SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES: SECOND PERIOD.

The use of this term, as distinguished from production, to distinguish between the primary generation of a current in a voltaic cell, a thermopile, or a friction-machine, by chemical or molecular action, and its indirect production without contact or communication of any material sort, as by motion of a wire near a magnet or by secondary influence from a neighbouring primary current while that current is varying in strength or proximity, is exceedingly significant. Faraday’s own meaning in adopting it is best grasped by referring to p. 1 of the “Experimental Researches”:—

“On the Induction of Electric Currents.”... The general term induction which, as it has been received into scientific language, may also, with propriety, be used to express the power which electrical currents may possess of inducing any particular state upon matter in their immediate neighbourhood.... I propose to call this action of the current from the voltaic battery volta-electric induction ... but as a distinction in language is still necessary, I propose to call the agency thus exerted by ordinary magnets magneto-electric or magne-electric induction.