Faraday's term " electrode," literally " a way (650s) for electricity to travel along," might be well applied to designate the insulated conductor along which the electric messenger is despatched.
If in a vessel of nitric acid are placed a large platinum plate and a platinum electrode of very small surface such as that produced when an extremely fine platinum wire is slightly immersed in the liquid, and if a current from a single voltaic cell is passed through the electrolytic cell so that the fine wire is the anode or positive pole, then the small surface will be polarized or covered with a film of gas due to electrolysis (fig.
If, however, one electrode of this cell is connected to the earth and the other to a receiving antenna and electric waves allowed to fall on the antenna, the oscillations passing through the electrolytic cell will remove the polarization and L temporarily decrease the resistance of the cell.
A highly insulated tube contains a little mercury, which is used as a negative electrode, and the tube also has sealed through the glass a platinum wire carrying an iron plate as an anode.
In the specification of the patent applied for on the list of July 1877 he showed a sketch of an instrument which consisted of a diaphragm, with a small platinum patch in the centre for an electrode, against which a hard point, made of plumbago powder cemented together with india-rubber and vulcanized, was pressed by a long spring, the pressure of the carbon against the platinum disk being adjusted by a straining screw near the base of the spring.