IN AN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3553, 28 November 1882, Page 4

IN AN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.

Professor S. P. Thomson sends to the Times an account of a trip on the Thames in a launch propelled by electricity. He says: " At half-past three in the afternoon I found myself on board the little vessel Electricity, lying at her mooring off the •wharf at the works of the Electrical Power Storage Company, Millwall. The little craft 18 26ft in length, and sft beam, drawing 2ft of water. She is fitted with a 22in propeller screw. On board were stowed away under the flooring and seats, fore and aft, fortyfire electric accumulators of the last type, as devised by Messrs Sellon and volckman, fully charged with electricity by wires leading from dynamo generators in the works. They were calculated to supply power for six hours, at the rate of four-horse power. These storage cells were placed in electrical connection with two Siemens dynamos (those known as D. 3), furnished with proper working gear and regulators, in order to serve as an engine to drive the screw propeller. Either or both of these motors could be switched into circuit at will. In charge of the electric engines was Mr Gustave Phillpot who has been associated "with Mr Volckman in fitting up the electric launch. Mr Volckman himself, and an engineer, completed (with the writer) the quartette who made the trial trip. After a few minutes run down the river, and a trial oithe powers of the boat to go forward, tack, or go astern at will, her head was turned citywards, and we sped silently along the southern shore, running at the rate of eight knots an hour against the tide. At S7.minutes past four London bridge was reached, where the head of the launch was put about, while a long line of onlookers from the parapets surveyed the strange craft, that without steam or visible power, and without even a visible steersman, made its way against wind and tide. Slipping down with the ebb, the wharf at Millwali •was gained at one minute past five, thus in twenty-four minutes terminating the trial trip of the Electricity." A contract has been made between a London syndicate and the Canton of Q-eneva for an electric railway on the Edison system —the first in Europe. It is to be immediately constructed, and will be some twelve and a-half miles in length, running from the eifcy of Greneya to St. Julien in BaVoy.