Michael Faraday first attempted to test a MHD converter in 1832. MHD converters involving plasmas were highly studied in the 1960s and 1970s, with many government funding and dedicated international conferences. One major conceptual application was the use of MHD converters on the hot exhaust gas in a coal fired power plant, where it could extract some of the energy with very high efficiency, and then pass it into a conventional steam turbine. The research almost stopped after it was considered the electrothermal instability would severely limit the efficiency of such converters when intense magnetic fields are used, although solutions may exist.