When free magnetism is developed by induction, and is not retained in that state by what has been termed the coercive force of hard steel, it has generally been considered that all the phenomena due to the existence of free magnetism cease on the removal of the inducing cause. The object of the present communication is to show that such is not the fact. From a variety of experiments described by the author, it appears that soft iron continued to exhibit strongly the attraction due to the developement of magnetism long after the means by which the magnetism had been originally excited had ceased to act. In these experiments, bars of soft iron, in the form of a horseshoe, had a single helix of copper wire wound round them, so that on the ends of the wire being brought into contact with the poles of a voltaic battery, the iron became an electromagnet. With one of these horse-shoes, while the connexion between the ends of the helix and the poles of the battery existed, the soft iron, having a keeper applied to its poles, supported 125 pounds it supported 56 pounds after that connexion had been broken, and continued to retain the power of supporting the same weight after an interval of several days, care having been taken not to disturb, during the time, the contact between the horse-shoe and its keeper. On this contact, however, being broken, nearly the whole attractive power appeared to be immediately lost. The author describes several instances of the same kind, particularly one in which the contact between the ends of the horse-shoe of soft iron and its keeper having been undisturbed during fifteen weeks, the attractive power continued undiminished. Although the interposition of a substance, such as mica or paper, between the ends of the horse-shoe and its keeper necessarily diminished the force of attraction, it did not appear to diminish the power of retaining that force. In a case where the electromagnet of soft iron and its keeper were equal semi-circles, the author found, what may appear singular, that the arrangement of the magnetism during the time that the electric current traversed the helix, appeared not to be the same as after the cessation of that current; in the one case similar, and in the other dissimilar, poles being opposed to each other at the opposite extremities of the two semi-circles. Whether the magnetism was originally developed in the soft iron by means of an electric current passing round it, or by passing over its surface the poles of an electromagnet, or those of a common magnet of hard steel, it appeared to possess the same power of retaining a large portion of the magnetism thus developed. The retention of the magnetism does not appear to depend upon the relative positions of the ends of the horse-shoe and the keeper remaining undisturbed, but on their contact remaining unbroken: for one keeper was substituted for another without diminution of this power; care being taken that the second should be in good contact with both ends of the horse-shoe before the complete removal of the first.
On the magnetic power of soft iron
