Faraday's own view on this point[1] was that a plate of amalgamated zine, when placed in dilute sulphuric acid, "has power so far to act, by its attraction for the oxygen of the particles in contact with it, as to place the similar forces already active between these and the other particles of oxygen and the particles of hydrogen in the water, in a peculiar state of tension or polarity, and probably also at the same time to throw those of its own particles which are in contact with the water into a similar but opposed state. Whilst this state is retained. no further change occurs: but when it is relieved by completion of the circuit, in which case the forces determined in opposite directions, with respect to the zine and the electrolyte, are found exactly competent to neutralize each other, then a series of decompositions and recompositions takes place amongst the particles of oxygen and hydrogen which constitute the water, between the place of contact with the platina and the place where the zine is active: these intervening particles being evidently in close dependence upon and relation to each other. The zinc forms a direct compound with those particles of oxygen which were, previously, in divided relation to both it and the hydrogen: the oxide is removed by the acid, and a fresh surface of zinc is presented to the water, to renew and repeat the action."
These ideas were developed further by the later adherents of the chemical theory, especially by Faraday's friend Christian Friedrich Schönbein,[2] of Basle (b. 1799, d. 1868), the discoverer of ozone. Schönbein made the hypothesis more definite by assuming that when the circuit is open, the molecules of water adjacent to the zinc plate are electrically polarized, the oxygen side of each molecule being turned towards the zinc and being negatively charged, while the hydrogen side is turned away from the zinc and is positively charged. In the third quarter
