Faraday had succeeded in observing electromagnetic induction. The apparatus he had used was, in effect, the first electrical transformer (a device for transferring electrical current from one circuit to another through a magnetic field, without physical linkages in between). Transformers are essential to our modern society, used in many applications, not least of which is the transmission of electrical power through a national grid to homes. Faraday was not setting out to invent the transformer. He was an experimentalist, and this was an accidental by-product of his experiments.
