Newton himself, as we have seen, had suspected that in the idea of a force acting between distant bodies that do not touch there was something missing; and that in order for the Earth to attract the Moon something that could transmit this force had to be there between the two. Two hundred years later, Faraday had found the solution – not for the force of gravity, but for the electric and magnetic forces: the field. Electric and magnetic fields ‘carry around’ the electric and magnetic force.
