Nor, indeed, could the action of the
battery, the different metals of which were in contact with each
other, decide the point in question. Still, as regards the identity
of electricities from various sources, it was at that day of great
importance to determine whether or not the voltaic current could
jump, as a spark, across an interval before contact. Faraday's
friend, Mr. Gassiot, solved this problem. He erected a battery of
4000 cells, and with it urged a stream of sparks from terminal to
terminal, when separated from each other by a measurable space of air.
The memoir on the 'Electricity of the Voltaic Pile,' published in
1834, appears to have produced but little impression upon the
supporters of the contact theory. These indeed were men of too
great intellectual weight and insight lightly to take up, or lightly
to abandon a theory. Faraday therefore resumed the attack in a
paper, communicated to the Royal Society on the 6th of February,
1840. In this paper he hampered his antagonists by a crowd of
adverse experiments. He hung difficulty after difficulty about the
neck of the contact theory, until in its efforts to escape from his
assaults it so changed its character as to become a thing totally
different from the theory proposed by Volta. The more persistently
it was defended, however, the more clearly did it show itself to be
a congeries of devices, bearing the stamp of dialectic skill rather
than of natural truth.
In conclusion, Faraday brought to bear upon it an argument which,
had its full weight and purport been understood at the time, would
have instantly decided the controversy.
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