The author traces the history of magnetism to show how we moved from an era of superstition to the age of discovery out of curiosity and necessity. Verschuur examines the early myths about magnetism, the bizarre experiments with amputated frog's legs and severed heads of sheep, and the breakthroughs of Michael Faraday and other pioneers who paved the way for advances in radio, telephone, and computer technology, and state-of-the-art theories about the universe. Black-and-white illustrations.