This text of the Candle is taken from a copy of the first edition, published by Griffin, Bohn and Company in March 1861, held in the Collections of the Royal Institution. The original published text of the Candle ran to just under 36,000 words, which took up 171 pages. This word density is low compared with modern typographical practice, so no attempt has been made to mimic the page layout of the first edition. However, most pages had a different running head (a practice that reflects what Faraday did with his research papers). The running heads thus provide an easy guide to the content of each page and they are listed on pp. 148–52. Since each page of the text printed here typically includes text from three pages of the original printing, only one of the running heads is used.
Crookes, as editor, inculcated into the text of Faraday’s words short descriptions of the lecture demonstrations and placed these in square brackets. He also wrote a series of nineteen explanatory notes published at the end of the lectures tied to the text by parentheses and the same practice has been followed here. Because of Crookes’s use of square brackets, minor typographical errors are here indicted in curly brackets {}.
Individuals mentioned in the text have been identified in the Introduction. Most of the chemical names, with some exceptions, that Faraday used are still current today. The major exceptions are carbonic acid, which is now known as carbon dioxide, whilst muriatic acid is now known as hydrochloric acid.
Faraday used the imperial system of measurement and their equivalents in the metric system are given below:
In Faraday’s time the chief unit of currency was the pound (£) divided into twenty shillings (s). In turn the shilling was made up of twelve pence (d). A guinea was one pound and a shilling, or twenty-one shillings. In 1861 £50 would secure the services of a good cook for a year, The Times cost 4d, entry to Madame Tussauds 1s, and it was possible to secure a second-class steam ship passage to New York for £14.
PLATE 4 Title page of the first edition of Michael Faraday,
The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
