Morning journal and courier., 1881-06-24
Electric Storage of Dynamical
 Energy.
Sir William ThOmson's Letter tn
 Subiect to the London .sTimes.,,

Sir William Thomson's Letter on the Subject to the London .sTimes.'' Sir: The marvellous 'sbox of electricity' described in letter to you, which was pub l lished in the Zinaes of May 16, has been sub jected to a variety of trials and measure m ,nts in my laboratory for now three weeks, and think it may interest your read CTS to learn that the results show your core spondent to have been by no means too | enthusiastic as to it's great practical value. l l am continuing my experiments to learn the behavior of the Faure battery in varied cir finding the best way of arranging it for the different kinds of service to which it is to be applied At the request of the Conseil d'Ad ninistration of the Society de la Ferce ct la Lamere, I have gladly undertaken this work, because the subject is one in which I feel 1 most intensely interested, seeing in it reali- zation of the most ardently and unceasingly- piration which I scarcely dared to expect or to hope to live to see realized.
 The problem of converting energy into 8 preservable and storable form, and of laying 1t up in store conveniently for allowing it to be used at any time when wanted, is one of the most interesting and important in the whole range of science. It is solved on 8 small scale in winding up watch, in draw ing bow, in compressing air into the re- ceiver of an air gun, or of Whitehead tor pedo, in winding up the weights of a clock or other machines driven by weights, and in pumping water by a windmill Cor otherwise, as in Sir William Armstrong's hydraulic &C., cumulator) for the purpose of using it after ward to do work by waterwheel or water pressure on a piston. It is solved on large scale by the application of burning fuel to smelt zinc, to be afterward used to give cleo trio light or to drive an electro magnetic en- zine by becoming, as it were, unsmelted in faio hofta Fyynr fnyfv years ago, founded the thermodynamic theory of the voltaic battery and the electro-mag- netic engine, the idea of applying the engine to work the battery backward and thus re- store the chemical energy to the materials so that they may again act voltaically, and again and again, has been familiar in science. But with all ordinary forms of voltaic battery the realization of the idea to any purpose seemed hopelessly distant. By Plante's admirable discovery of the lead and peroxide of lead voltaic battery, alluded to by your corre- spondent an important advance toward the desired object was made twenty years ago 1; and now by NJ. Faure's improvement practi cal fruition is attained.
 The million of foot pounds" kept in the box during its seventy-two hours journey from Paris to Glasgow was no exaggeration. One of the four cells, after being discharged, was recharged again by it's own laboratory battery and then left to itself absolutely un-
 
 to me two hundred and sixty thousand foot pounds Cor little more than quarter of a miIlion) This not only confirms M. Key nier' $ measurements, on the faith of which your correspondents statements were made ]; it seems further to show that the waste of the stored energy by time is not great and that for days or weeks, at all events, it may not be-of practical moment. This, however, is question which can only be answered by careful observations and measurements car ried on for much longer time than have hitherto had for investigating the Faure bat tery. have already ascertained enough re garding it's qualities to make it quite certain that it solves the problem of storing electric energy in a manner and on a scale useful for many important practical applications. It has already had in this country one interesting application of the smallest in respect to dyna- mical energy used, but not of the smallest in respect to benefcence, of all that may be ex- l pected of it. A few days ago my colleague, | Professor George Buchanan carried away 1 from my laboratory one of the lead cells l (weighing about eighteen pounds) in his car- riage, and by it ignited the thick platinum | wire of galvanic ecrGseau and bloodlessly re- moved nevoid tumor from the tongue of a young boy in about minute of time. The operation would have occupied over ten min utes if performed by the ordinary chain ecraseur, as it must have been had the Faure cell not been available, because in the cir l cumstances the surgical electrician, with his paraphernalia of voltaic battery to be set up beforehand, would not have been practically l admissible
 The largest useful application waiting just
 now for the Faure battery and it is to be hoped that the very minimum of time will be