Among these men, who were, it should be noted, theoretical
investigators, rather than practical inventors like Morse, or
Bell, or Edison, the American Joseph Henry ranks high. Henry was
born at Albany in 1799 and was educated at the Albany Academy.
Intending to practice medicine, he studied the natural sciences.
He was poor and earned his daily bread by private tutoring. He
was an industrious and brilliant student and soon gave evidence
of being endowed with a powerful mind. He was appointed in 1824
an assistant engineer for the survey of a route for a State road,
three hundred miles long, between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.
The experience he gained in this work changed the course of his
career; he decided to follow civil and mechanical engineering
instead of medicine. Then in 1826 he became teacher of
mathematics and natural philosophy in the Albany Academy.
It was in the Albany Academy that he began that wide series of
experiments and investigations which touched so many phases of
the great problem of electricity. His first discovery was that a
magnet could be immensely strengthened by winding it with
insulated wire. He was the first to employ insulated wire wound
as on a spool and was able finally to make a magnet which would
lift thirty-five hundred pounds.
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