Fire from Heaven: Michael Faraday and the Dawn of the Electrical Age
Written & Directed by Murray Watts I Performed by Andrew Harrison
From the creators of the acclaimed Mr Darwin’s Tree comes this inspiring new play about a young man from the humblest background who rose to become one of the greatest experimental scientists of the Nineteenth Century.
Please stay for a reception and panel discission immediately following the performance.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) rose from a very humble background to become one of the greatest experimental scientists of all time. His father was a blacksmith and Faraday left school at the age of 12 with only the most basic education. His family came from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ in a world where science (or Natural Philosophy as it was then called) was the preserve of the wealthy and privileged. There was little hope for a working class lad from the streets of London and Faraday had another great disadvantage socially: his family were dissenters, members of an obscure Christian sect called the Sandemanians which, although orthodox in beliefs, immediately excluded him form Oxford or Cambridge or any kind of university education. The Anglican establishment still ruled the day in law and government and in the social hierarchy.
There are many who believe that Faraday’s ability to ‘think outside the box’, the sheer originality of his mind, owed a great deal to the non-conformity of his religion and his experience of life on the margins, where he was forced to take his own initiative in everything. His first job was as a paper boy, working for Ribeau’s bookshop in Blandford Street but, before long, he was offered a place as an apprentice bookbinder. Surrounded by thousands of volumes, Faraday began to read voraciously. The entry on ‘Electricity’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica seized his imagination. His employer recognised the teenager’s potential and allowed Faraday to conduct his own experiments, with chemicals, in a backroom. In this way, Faraday began his humble career as an aspiring ‘natural philosopher’. Ribeau soon realised that his industrious apprentice was a scientific prodigy and encouraged him to pursue his ambitions against all the odds.
Among the great scientific establishments of the day was The Royal Society, the elite society of natural philosophers (many of whom were wealthy and aristocratic) and the Royal Institution which had been founded recently to advance scientific learning for the general population. The director of the Royal Institution (also a member of the Royal Society) was the illustrious Sir Humphry Davy, one of the world’s greatest chemists and a heroic figure to Michael Faraday. Faraday was thrilled to receive tickets from a wealthy customer of the bookshop to attend one of Davy’s unforgettable lectures…
And this is where the action of the play begins.
