The name of William Sturgeon, so honorably connected with the science of electricity and magnetism, has a fair claim to be entered on this list. Sturgeon was a Lancashire man, born at Wittington in that county in 1783. All his youth was spent at the shoemaker’s stall. On arriving at manhood he abandoned this quiet, peaceful occupation for the life of a soldier. After two years’ service in the militia he enlisted in the Royal Artillery. Like William Cobbett, he found it possible to read in the midst of the distractions of the barrack-room. His chief attention was given to the study of electricity and magnetism, which at that time were attracting a great deal of attention on the part of men of science.[178] The first proof Sturgeon gave of special and extensive knowledge on the subject was in the papers which he contributed to the Philosophical Magazine in 1823-24. In 1825 he published an account of certain magneto-electric appliances, for which the Society of Arts awarded him their silver medal and a purse containing £30. About this time, that is, soon after leaving the army, he was appointed to the chair of experimental philosophy in the East India Company’s Military Academy at Addiscombe. His pamphlet, published in 1830, on “Experimental Researches in Electro-Magnetism and Galvanism,” described his own experiments, which issued in an improved method of preparing plates for the galvanic battery; a method still found, in many respects, to be the best. He invented the electro-magnetic-coil machine, now used very frequently by medical men in giving a succession of shocks to the patient, and still preferred by the faculty to other instruments for this purpose. This industrious and original investigator was also the inventor of a method of driving machinery by electro-magnetism; but he little dreamt, it may be, of the extent to which electricity would be employed in these days as a motive power and for lighting purposes. He edited the “Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry,” and published his own works in one volume a few years before his death. Like many inventors, he never made a fortune, but died poor. A Government pension of £50 per annum came to relieve him of his cares only the year before his death, which occurred in 1850.