“The Press” In 1865

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30769, 5 June 1965, Page 14

“The Press” In 1865

SCIENTIFIC NOTES.—A practical application of electricity in an altogether new direction has just been made by an engineer at Lausanne, and seems nearly to promise very valuable results. The gentleman in question has found that the electric current is capable of performing readily and cheaply an operation which, as practised hitherto, has been one of the most unhealthy in the whole range of industrial arts, namely, that of sharpening the points of pins and needles. He first observed that if a thin wire connected with the negative pole of a galvanic battery, and so forming a negative electrode, he passed, through its bottom, into a vessel containing water slightly acidulated, and another wire similar wire, connected with the positive pole of the battery and so forming a positive electrode,

enter by the mouth of the vessel, and pass down into the acidulated liquid until its point is within the sixteenth of an inch or so of that negative wire, each wire being placed vertically, and the one exactly above the other, a circuit will be completed by the aid of the small quantity of acidulated liquid between the extremities of the two electrodes. A current will thus pass, and within a few minutes the lower extremity of the upper wire, or positive electrode, will have become perfectly conical, the fineness of the point of the cone depending on the thickness of the wire, the metal it is made of, and the particular acid used. Experiments suggested by this observation resulted in the discovery that precisely the same phenomenon would occur in the case of each, if, instead of a single wire, a bundle consisting of a great many wires were used as the positive electrode.