I. The Bakerian Lecture, on some chemical agencies of electricity

Abstract

The chemical effects produced by electricity have been for some time objects of philosophical attention; but the novelty of the phenomena, their want of analogy to known facts, and the apparent discordance of some of the results, have involved the enquiry in much obscurity. An attempt to elucidate the subject will not, I hope, be considered by the Society as unfitted to the design of the Bakerian Lecture. I shall have to detail some minute (and I fear tedious) experiments; but they were absolutely essential to the investigation. I shall likewise, however, be able to offer some illustrations of appearances which hitherto have not been fully explained, and to point out some new properties of one of the most powerful and general of material agents.