Flux Lines and Faraday

This is how Michael Faraday came up with the concept of the magnetic field - iron filings sprinkled around a magnet. So a force field has SHAPE. We also used plotting compasses to show the same shape and that it has DIRECTION.

Somewhere along the line I have picked up the idea that they are called FLUX lines, which is Latin for flow, because he thought that there was a flow around a magnetic circuit. I was told that this isn't true. In my final year at university we used an equation for magnetic machines like motors that used flux as if it were current in a circuit. Not true but it certainly worked, I have been trying to check what I remember being told. I found this on the NASA site http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/whfldlns.html It echoes what I have just described but not exactly. I had not known that he had called them Lines of Force. I need to read more on Faraday and reflect on how many half-truths I've picked up along the way.