Aluminium chloride, AlC1 3, was first prepared by Oersted, who heated a mixture of carbon and alumina in a current of chlorine, a method subsequently improved by Wohler, Bunsen, Deville and others.
C. Oersted (1777-1851) had shown that a magnetic needle is deflected by an electric current, he attempted, in the laboratory of the Royal Institution in the presence of Humphry Davy, to convert that deflection into a continuous rotation, and also to obtain the reciprocal effect of a current rotating round a magnet.
C. Oersted (21st July 1820) were still in 1821 apprehended in a somewhat confused manner even by the foremost men of science.
C. Oersted 6 that a magnet placed near a wire carrying an electric current tended to set itself at right angles to the wire, a phenomenon which indicated that the current was surrounded by a magnetic field.
C. Oersted's discovery that a magnetic needle is acted on by a voltaic current.
In it Oersted describes the action he considers is taking place around 2 Faraday discussed the chemical theory of the pile and arguments in support of it in the 8th and 16th series of his Experimental Researches on Electricity.
In the annals of modern science Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) is a name universally honoured.
It is clear, moreover, that Oersted clearly recognized the existence of what is now called the magnetic field round the conductor.
Oersted's discovery in 1819 was indeed epoch-making in the degree to which it stimulated other research.
Oersted's important discovery was the fact that when a wire joining the end plates of a voltaic pile is held near a pivoted magnet or compass needle, the latter is deflected and places itself more or less transversely to the wire, the direction depending upon whether the wire is above or below the needle, and on the manner in which the copper or zinc ends of the pile are connected to it.
This discovery of Oersted, like that of Volta, stimulated philosophical investigation in a high degree.
To take a simple instance, if we consider an electric current as flowing in a conductor it is, as Oersted discovered, surrounded by closed lines of magnetic force.
Turning to practical applications of electricity, we may note that electric telegraphy took its rise in 1820, beginning with a suggestion of Ampere immediately after Oersted's discovery.