Michael Faraday may have invented an electricity generator, but he was also an unstoppable media dynamo. An analysis of the 19th-century physicist’s rise to fame shows he was an arch manipulator of a burgeoning mass media.
Patricia Fara, a science historian at the University of Cambridge, says the increasing use of the steam-powered printing press (invented in 1812) and the invention of photography (1822) gave Faraday the perfect chance to promote himself.
In a paper to be published in the science history journal Endeavour, Fara says that Faraday “was well aware that pictures could provide powerful propaganda”. In portraits for books, newspapers and portrait cards he adopted seemingly nonchalant poses that would make him look like a solid, honest and practical person to whom genius came easily.
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Faraday took lessons in drama and elocution to temper his cockney accent, and the spin spun by the blacksmith’s son appears to have worked. “Faraday was a working class hero,” says Fara.
