CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN IGNITION AND ILLUMINATION
Year: 1846

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, WILLIAM
GREENEB, of Birmingham, in the County of Warwick, Gunmaker, and
WILLIAM EDWARDS STAITE, of Peckham, in the County of Surrey, Esquire,
send greeting.
WHEREAS Her present most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Royal Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at
Westminster, the Seventh day of February, in the ninth year of Her reign,
did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto us, the said
William Greener and William Edwards Staite, our exors, adñors, and assigns,
Her especial licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that we, the said
William Greener and William Edwards Staite, our exors, admors, and assigns,
or such others as we, the said William Greener and William Edwards Staite,
our exors, admors, or assigns, should at any time agree with, and no others,
from time to time and at all times during the term of years therein expressed,
should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within England,
Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, our Invention of "CERTAIN
IMPROVEMENTS IN IGNITION AND ILLUMINATION;" in which said Letters Patent
is contained a proviso that we, the said William Greener and William
Edwards Staite, or one of us, shall cause a particular description of the
nature of our said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be per-
formed, to be inrolled in Her said Majesty's High Court of Chancery

page_text: within six calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said
in part recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, reference being there-
unto had, will more fully and at large appear..
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said
William Greener and William Edwards Staite, hereby declare that the nature
of our said Invention, and the manner in which the same is performed,
may be stated generally as consisting in effecting the illumination of public
and private buildings, streets, squares, and other public places, by means of
solid prisms or cylinders of carbon enclosed in air-tight vessels of glass or
some other transparent substance, and ignited or rendered luminous by currents
of voltaic or magnetic electricity, such carbon being previously freed from the
impurities with which it is ordinarily combined, and divided on the surface
thereof into numerous acute points, or by means of rods or strips of platinum
or some other like difficultly fusible metal enclosed in transparent air-tight
vessels, and ignited or rendered luminous by currents of voltaic or magnetic
electricity, as aforesaid, such metal being also divided on the surface thereof
into numerous acute points, or by means of hollow cylinders of carbon with
surfaces either plain or acuminated partially inserted within and placed in
perfect contact with hollow cones of platinum, either plain or acuminated,
the whole being enclosed in transparent air-tight vessels, as aforesaid, and. the
carbon being ignited or rendered luminous by voltaic or magnetic electricity,
also as aforesaid; or by a combination or combinations of the whole of the
said means or methods, or of any two thereof, or of any of the parts thereof
.respectively. Both carbon and platinum have been before employed as media
for the developement and exhibition of electric light, but carbon even in the
purest states in which it has hitherto been obtainable, when ignited or rendered
luminous in an air-tight glass vessel by means of electric currents, has been
found to give out various extraneous matters which interfere with the continuity
of the light, and which being precipitated on the inside of the glass vessel
obscure and darken the same, and plain surfaced platinum, when substituted
.for. the carbon in the air-tight vessel, has never yielded more than a com
paratively very feeble light. Now to obtain for the purpose of our Invention
a carbon absolutely pure, or at least more nearly, approaching absolute purity
than any heretofore known, we proceed as follows-We take a quantity o
what is known in commerce under the denomination of lamp black, or of char
'coal reduced to a state of powder, or of coke, also reduced to powder, which
has been purified by the application of electricity. from; sulphur and othe
metallic mixtures, according to the process for which Jabez Church, of Col

page_text: chester, has obtained Letters Patent, of date the Twentieth of December, One,
thousand eight hundred and forty-five, and digest the same in dilute nitro-
muriatic or other acid; we then strain the lamp black or charcoal or coke
from the acid, and wash it several times with water, and we next wash it in
some weak alkaline solution or carbonated alkaline solution, and finally we
wash it with distilled water until no traces of impurity are perceptible. The
carbon thus highly purified we next bring into a state of great dryness, and
then convert it into solid prisms, or into cylinders both solid and hollow, by
means of a hydraulic or screw or fly press (in the same way as the well-known
porcelain buttons are formed); and sometimes, the better to insure perfect
dryness and homogenousness, we expose the said prisms or cylinders to intense
heat in a furnace for about twenty-four hours. To give the solid carbon
prisms or cylinders the numerous acute points on their surfaces before men-
tioned, they are cast in suitably indented dies, or the points are afterwards cut
out in them by means of a fine saw. By opposing two such acuminated
surfaces the one to the other, we secure this advantage, that should the electric
currents cease between any two points (as happens frequently in the ordinary
mode of igniting carbon by electricity, when there are only two points in
opposition,) the currents will be kept up by the remaining points, and the light
be so maintained without any material interruption or abatement. The same
purpose may in some cases be effected by substituting for bodies with such
acuminated surfaces a multitude of thin strips of charcoal separated from
each other by platinum foil, and bound together by platinum wire. Instead
also of employing either lamp black or charcoal or coke, we sometimes
substitute plumbago or black lead, prepared, formed, and used in the same
way; but the sort of carbon we prefer before all others is that prepared in the
manner before mentioned from coke by Church's Patent process. When we
use platinum or any other difficultly fusible metal as the illuminating medium,
we multiply as much as we conveniently can the number of separate points on
its surface, and with this view we either perforate a solid sheet of the metal
with a multitude of minute holes, or we take it in the form of wire and weave
it into a guaze of sufficient thickness to resist the heat produced by the electric
current, without fusing. When we employ the combination before. mentioned
of hollow cylinders of carbon with hollow cones of platinum, we arrange them
5 as follows:-Supposing a voltaic battery of any of the most. approved forms
to be employed, we connect each of the two conducting wires, namely, the
positive and negative, with a hollow cone of platinum, either plain or acumi-
nated, and place the cones with their bases facing, but at a little distance
from one another.' We then connect the two cones by placing between them

page_text: a hollow cylinder of carbon, either plain or acuminated, and insert it so far into
the cones at the two ends as to be in perfect contact therewith all round.
The relative diameters should be such as to render it necessary to introduce
the cylinder but a small way into the cones. Such cones and cylinders may
be used either in single sets or in any number of sets which the battery or
batteries employed may be adequate to supply. The sets, too, may be arranged
in any order, and they may be of any variety or varieties of size best calcu-
lated to produce an equable, well-sustained and brilliant light. When the
platinum or carbon or other difficultly fusible metal (in whatever form
employed) is placed within the air-tight vessel of glass or other transparent
substance, it may be either kept stationary or made to rotate on its axis.
We think it unnecessary to describe either how the air-tight vessel which is to
enclose the illuminating bodies should be mounted, or how the electric currents
are to be conveyed to them from the voltaic battery or magnetic machine
employed, because there are many well-known modes of doing so, and we do
not claim to have invented anything new in these respects. We desire it
farther to be understood that we lay no claim to the employment of carbon
or platinum, or other like difficultly fusible metal enclosed within air-tight
vessels as a medium for the developement and exhibition of electric light, the
suitableness of both bodies for the purpose when so enclosed (subject to the
exceptions aforesaid) being long well known. But we declare that what we
do claim as of our Invention is,-
First, the employment as a medium for the developement and exhibition
of electric light of carbon purified and prepared as before described.
Second, the employment for the said purpose of carbon and platinum or
any other like difficultly fusible metal in solid prisms or cylinders divided on
the surfaces thereof into numerous acute points, or in such other forms as to
present numerous acute points, as before described. And,
Third, the employment for the said purpose of hollow cylinders of carbon,
either plain or acuminated, in combination with hollow cones of platinum or
other like difficultly fusible metal, either plain or acuminated, as before
described.
:
224
In witness whereof, we, the said William Greener and William Edwards
Staite, have hereunto set our hands and seals, this Fifth day of
August, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and
forty-six.

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the Fifth day of August, in the
year of our Lord 1846, the aforesaid William Greener and William Edwards
Staite came before our said Lady the Queen in Her Chancery, and acknow-
ledged the Specification aforesaid, and all and every thing therein.contained
and specified, in form above written. And also the Specification aforesaid
was stamped according to the tenor of the Statute made for that purpose.
Enrolled the Seventh day of August, in the year of our Lord One thousand