The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-05-14
E1EorB1orry FROM HEAT.
A Hartford Inventors Remarkable Pro

into electrical current, and his name is
 Harry Barringer Cox.
 He is a young man who came here
 8 few years ago from his native state
 of Ohio, and has stuck to this great problem until he has successfully solved
 it.
 MT. Cox has done what Edison and
 Tesla have only dreamed of doing, and
 there is no mystery or secret about what he has mplished-anybody can
 understand it. He has found out the way to make thermo-electricity commer- cially possible, and thus has made prac-
 tical and useful the thermo-electrical principle discovered by Professor See beck of Berlin in 1921.
 How to produce a thermo-electric gem orator Qnvolving the direct conversion of heat into electrical energy) that would not be subject to rapid deterlora- tion, has been the despair of the scien- tific world. Mr Cox does not claim to
 be 8 great man, or very learned man,
 but he has done what so many others have tried to do in vain. His new gem orator is comparatively inexpensive and it lasts-lasts without apparent deteri- oratton for years. It is simple of con- struct.on, an l it requires as much brain } to manage as to keep fire in an ordi- nary stove--no more.
 MT. Cox has been very patient in- ventor. He has not been in a hurry To-day he can show in his laboratory a generator in appearance much like an or1f 0hA 1-h which for three years has developed a 110-volt current of sufficient volume to operate q pump and do other useful work, and apparently 1t is as good as when new. But this fact could not have been demonstrated in one year or two years, and before it was construct ed were the years of groping eXperi mentation in the discovery of how to build it.
 With the various generators which he now has in operation, MT. Cox finds the cost of electrical lumination to be not more than one-fifth the cost where a dynamo operated by steam is used. For one cent an hour in coal consumption he is able to produce five ordinary in- candescent lights. This rate of saving, when the new generator can be general ly introduced, will prove an enormous economy. It means that We may ex- pect to get five times as much work out of every ton of coal as we get now through the medium of the steam en- zine.
 Nine-tenths of the energy in fuel is lost when it Is burned to make steam, if we take into account all the dissipa- ton of energy that occurs in utilizing that power by means of steam en- zine. With direct conversion of the fuel into current, less than one-half will be lost. Let any one who has an im- aginatfon think out what that means to the world.
 Professor Dolbear, the eminent elec- trician, said not long ago: "When heat energy can be transformed directly into electrical energy without needing an in termediate steam engine, it is probable that the cost of electrical energy would be easily reduced to one-tenth its pres ent figures, and the sudden enormous increase in its use which would sudden ly follow such a discovery would indeed justify the prevalent expression that electricity is now in it's infancy"
 Mir. Cox does not talk about abolish ing nine-tenths of the cost of energy only four-fifths How will lie do it?
 Seebeck discovered that when two metals are joined and heated, cleo tricity is developed, but for seventy years inventors have been baffled by the difficulty of effecting junction between two metals that would not speedily lose the power of electrical by reason of oxidization. MT. Cox's greatest achievement seems to be the merging of the component parts of his electrical element into each other in such way as to have no junction point. The two alloys composing the elements are graduated or shaded into each other. Thus are produced the small, wedged- shaped bits of alloy which, when mul- tiplied and connected with each other, becomes a ring that may be held in the hand, if the generator to be con- be for a gas jet, or may be large enough to encircle a stout mans waist if the generator be intended for a coal burner.
 These rings are then "bullt up" one upon the other, with sheets of asbes- JOS LO oSpetlLC LiiElily uhbl ct0 LllC piIC of rings becomes a hollow cylinder, the interior is lined with plastic cement, which is vitrified. A metallic casing Is put around the element to complete It, and the application of this casing to the cylinder so that It becomes an integral part of 1t yet is perfectly in sulated from it, is one of MT. Cox's l greatest mechanical triumphs.
 Provision is made for a current of | water, for cooling purposes to cir i ,ulate between the metal casing and | he outer shell of the generator which | S next applied The completed struc- | .ure is an apparatus in which a fire ] ,an be kept burning for a year con- without altering or injuring | t to any appreciable extent Even | jetting fire to a newspaper in the in- erior will set the electrical current to lowing, if the fire has been extin- cuished, so sensitive is this remark Lble apparatus. It is impossible for m ordinary newspaper article to de- cribe the converter in greater de- all
 It is of more interest to know that Ir. Cox has given his generators ome thorough practical tests, espe- tally in the offices of the Commercial table company of New York, which
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