Very Primitive and Early Faraday Rotating Wire Apparatus

ca. 1830's

This early Device illustrates electro-magnetic rotation: a copper wire hangs down into a hand-cut open glass cup in which a small cylindrical magnet is fixed in the socket of the cup so that one of its poles is a little above the mercury. When a battery is connected so as to run current through the copper wire on one end and the mercury on the other, the wire will rotate around the magnet; this illustrates one of Faraday's first experiments showing the relationship between magnetism and electricity.