Note 145 — Chapter IX

“This capital discovery (chemical decomposition of electricity) appears to have been made in the first instance by Messrs. Nicholson and Carlisle, who observed the decomposition of water so produced. It was speedily followed up by the still more important one of Berzelius and Hisinger, who ascertained it as a general law, that, in all the decompositions so effected, the acids and oxygen become transferred and accumulated around the positive, and hydrogen, metals, and alkalies around the negative, pole of a voltaic circuit; being transferred in an invisible, and, as it were, a latent or torpid state, by the action of the electric current, through considerable spaces, and even through large quantities of water or other liquids, again to reappear with all their properties at their appropriate resting-places.”—Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy: by Sir John Herschel, Bart., F.R.S.