The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1881-08-11
Storing Electricity Wonderful Dis
cOyery.

stored electricity the London Times
saws:
Sir William Thomson reminds us that
the storage of force ito be afterwards
put to practical use is very old con-
trivance, of which we may see an illus
tration in the winding of a watch; and
also that the storage of electricity has
long been familiar to men of science as
a theoretical possibility. There is often
long step, however, from theoretical
possibility TO practical achievement;
and what we are now called upon to
notice is no longer that such a storage
may perhaps be accomplished at some
future time, but that it has actually
been accomplished upon what may al
most be called a working scale. Many
philosophers are of opinion that cleo
tricity, at no distant date, will entirely
supersede fires for cooking and heating,
steam as asmotor, and gas and oil as IL
luminants, but hitherto it has been felt
as a great difficulty, economical rather
than scientific, that the agents proposed
to be superseded were themselves actu-
ally employed to produce the electricity.
1t has been asserted, moreover, that the
sectional area of the metallic conductors
required to deliver electricity in guam
titles suited to the requirements of town
communities would have to be enor-
mously large, and in corresponding
degree costly; and that difficulty in
regard to insulation would be of con-
slant occurrence. But electricity is
to be obtained from the atmos-
phere by simple mechanical means
wherever any kind of motor power is
available; and, if it can be stored in
portable batteries and carried about for
use, there seems to be no reason why it
should not be obtained in very cheap
ways, as by wind or water mills by
mechanical contrivances for utilizing
the ebb and flow of the tides, or BY
other applications of the power which
nature everywhere offers for the use of
man, and which is so frequently suffered
to run to waste. Neither g f. /. r. S."
nor Sir James Thomson has as vet
furnished us with even an approximate
estimate of the cost of maintaining a
Fallre s. battery as measured by the
amount of force which it is capable of
exerting; and it must not be forgotten
that million foot pounds. although
sounding like an enormous amount to
those who are familiar with the form of
expression, is yet something which
would not go very far in the wayo sup
plying the motor wants of a workshop.
Faure' s battery is constructed mainly of
lead-a circumstance which necessarily
renders it heavy, and in Correspond
ing degree costly of carriage while a
new demand for the metal, if in LARGE
quantities, must, of course, tend to a
considerable enhancement of it's price,
Against these considerations must be
set the obvious one that other materials
may be found capable of employment
in similar manner; the principle of the
battery being that the electricity with
which it is said to be charged is ex-
pended within it in the production of
chemical change, and is released again
by the establishment of new action by
which the materials employed are suf-
tered to return to their original condi-
ton. There is no prima facie reason why
lead should be more available for this
Kind of composition or decomposition
than some other substances and, now
that the method of producing the de-
sired effect hassbeen made known in
the case of lead, philosophers will soon
be engaged in the endeavor to discover
some substance which may offer still
greater advantages for the purpose.
Unless the price of storage should be
found to offer practically insurmounta-
bic difficulties, there can be no doubt
that the new discovery will hasten, by
many years, the general application of
to the industrial and domestic
purposes. 4
To those who remember the solicitude
which was expressed, not many years
ago, about the gradual exhaustion of
the English coal-field, and about the in
evltable loss, whenever that exhaustion
reached the point of famine. of English
maritime and manufacturing supreme
ey, it will be curious to think of pos
sible near future, in which the ID black
SO highly priced by our
and by ourselves, NAV have /
passed quite out of the range of prac-
tical application, and may possess none
but an historical interest, as the sources
OF our mechanical power wheniwe did |
not know how to obtain it in better
way. We believe it was Sir William
Thomson himself who once spoke of |
Niagara as the natural and proper chief
motor for the whole of the North Amer
lean Continent; and it now seems quite |
within the bounds of possibility that |
persons who are how living may wit /
ness the application of this chief motor
to the indicated uses. 1t is. possible /
that they may see electricity brought
by electric railways from the coasts. or
from estuaries of tidal rivers, and de-
ivered in the great towns for the fulfill |
nent of all the purposes for which coal
s at present either directly or indi- /
,eetly employed; and it would not be
Easy to exaggerate the benefits, from
many points of view, which such a SUBJ
'titution of electricity for coal would |
afford. If we can imagine the atmos-
,here of London smokeless and clean.
incontaminated either by the solid or
~ the gaseous products Of combustion;
With flowers and fruit furnishing in
own gardens; with our rooms, and es-
'ecially our public rooms and places of
lssembly, freed from the heat which
sas occasions; and with nature and art
in their true colors by might as