LATEST IN ELECTRIC SCIENCE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 13 April 1908, Page 3

LATEST IN ELECTRIC SCIENCE

How would you like to have a little electric battery that would light your house, work your electric fans, and run your wife's sewing machine; a battery so small and light that you could pick it up and carry it out and place it in a motor car which it would run down to your office or factory, there to furnish light and power for a lathe or other small machine; which would run your motor car home again and, reinstated in your house, furnish light, power, and even heat? To invent such a battery has long ] been the dream of every electrician. It is reported that a young Philadelphian has achieved this success. " The apparatus has been shown to many experts, all of whom had smiled incredulously when told that there was a primary battery which would actually furnish light and power, and in practicable quantities. Every expert who saw it was astounded. "What they saw was this: — A box, about two feet long, a foot deep, and eighteen inches wide, containing twelve cells of hard rubber, each cell packed with four small cells shaped like and about the same size as photographers' plateholders. The whole apparatus weighs 751b. It stands upon an iron frame', under which is a small cylindrical tank of galvanised iron, with an air pump projecting therefrom. The twelve cells are covered with thin lids of hard rubber. Lifting one of these lids the group of individual cells is disclosed. Each of the latter is a light frame of hard rubber, with a thin plate of corrugated graphite on each side and a plate of zinc in the middle, separated by a flat cup of porous porcelain so thin as to be almost transparent. The battery, at rest, is uncharged, therein differing from all other batteries. To charge it the air pump is put in action by- hand, and in a few seconds the fluids are seen rising in the cells. These fluids are contained in the tank below and are forced up into the cells through a system of channels in the rubber casing. As soon as th» battery is -charged it begins- to make) electricity. This little battery, which can be carried, about by any man, furnishes enough power to light an ordinary i house or to operate a small motor car or motor boat or any light machinery.

Liver