Faraday also rediscovered specific inductive capacity in 1837, the results of the experiments by Cavendish not having been published at that time.

Cavendish also discovered the inductive capacity of dielectrics (insulators), and, as early as 1778, measured the specific inductive capacity for beeswax and other substances by comparison with an air condenser.

Jenkin had in fact made a determination at Birkenhead of the specific inductive capacity of gutta-percha, or of the gutta-percha and Chatterton's compound constituting the insulation of the cable, on which he experimented.

While there he excelled at mathematics and science, studying under Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and earning a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for his authorship of a scientific treatise on "the Specific Inductive Capacity of Dielectrics".

It was recognized by J. J. Thomson in 1881 that a charged sphere moving in a space filled with a medium of a specific inductive capacity (the electromagnetic aether of James Clerk Maxwell), is harder to set in motion than an uncharged body.