Michael Faraday (1791-1867) an Englishman, made one of the most significant discoveries in the history of electricity: Electromagnetic induction. His pioneering work dealt with how electric currents work. Many inventions would come from his experiments, but they would come fifty to one hundred years later. Failures never discouraged Faraday. He would say; "the failures are just as important as the successes." He felt failures also teach. The farad, the unit of capacitance is named in the honor of Michael Faraday.

Faraday was greatly interested in the invention of the electromagnet, but his brilliant mind took earlier experiments still further. If electricity could produce magnetism, why couldn't magnetism produce electricity. In 1831, Faraday found the solution. Electricity could be produced through magnetism by motion. He discovered that when a magnet was moved inside a coil of copper wire, a tiny electric current flows through the wire. H.C. Oersted, in 1820, demonstrated that electric currents produce a magnetic field. Faraday noted this and in 1821, he experimented on the theory that, if electric currents in a wire can produce magnetic fields, then magnetic fields should produce electricity. By 1831, he was able to prove this and through his experiment, was able to explain, that these magnetic fields were lines of force. These lines of force would cause a current to flow in a coil of wire, when the coil is rotated between the poles of a magnet. This action then shows that the coils of wire being cut by lines of magnetic force, in some strange way, produces electricity. These experiments, convincingly demonstrated the discovery of electromagnetic induction in the production of electric current, by a change in magnetic intensity.