THE EDISON ACCUMULATOR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 11 February 1908, Page 1

THE EDISON ACCUMULATOR

A PROTEST AGAINST SENSATIONALISM. Mi- Edison had the following to say to a correspondent of the London "Daily Mail" recently in regard to his new storage battery, from which it will be gathere that the inventor is very sanguine regarding it: — "Two months hence the perfected battery will be an accomplished fact, and butchers and small tradesmen will be able to acquire a waggon that will run more miles during its lifetime than any horse. Now I have in this building a battery that will last for 50,000 miles. A truck armed with it as motive power, could travel twice as fast, and occupy half the space of a horse and waggon." -- An electrical engineer, writing to the "Autocar," enters a • very strong protest against statements such as the above that are continually being made, apparently by Mr Edison, or in his name, on the matter of the electrical accumulator. He says : "To our thinking, the continual booming uselessly—on behalf of Mr Edison, is prostituting a great nams. Mr Edison has practically all that man is supposed to desire. He has climbed up from a very, lowly position to one of great wealth. He has been fortunate above the common run of inventors, as we know them on this side of the Atlantic, in that he has made money, and a large amount of it, by his inventions. He has made a name, such as few men make in their lifetime, and he has been worshipped as few men have been worshipped in this life. He has apparently the Rrcme of the inventor's pliss — a fully equipped laboratory with plenty of apparatus and plenty of employees, entirely devoted o the working out of the many problems that retrain to be solved. . Is it not time thatne, or those who apeak in his name, cease from making absurd statements, such as those that were recently given to the admiring reporters of the general press The world is quite prepared to receive the accumulator that has been so long promised by Mr Tdison, when he produces it, and to receive it with open arms. But it is nothing more or less than an insult to the general intelligence of the engineering world for him or his representatives to keep on making the childish statements with which he is credited regularly as to what he is supposed to have done. It will be remembered that, when Mr Edison first took up the problem, an evidently preliminary battery of the purely laboratory type was given to the world, with the usual flourish of trumpets, and it was only after a challenge given in our columns to Mr Edison to bring his invention to the test of the criticism of experienced engineers that this stalking horse was withdrawn, and the real invention introduced to the public, in the manner in which we had challenged hijn to introduce it, by a description of it before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The invention then described was undoubtedly a new departure, and the engineering world then, as now, was quite prepared to give it a fair trial. It is some years since it was introduced, it has had its trial, and the ' common verdict of every impartial witness is that, while it is distinctly novel, it presents very little advantage over the older form of lead and lead oxide. Since its introduction, though statements have been made from time to time as to what was going to be done with it, and how Mr Edison wag testing itr— by throwing it put of \\\a factory window — and how one of his men had driven an electromobile with it a certain distance, the fact remain; that for practical purposes it is no better than the old form of battery. It has certain advantages, but, on the other hand, it has certain graye disadvantages,, not the least of which is the fact that the pressure delivered by a single cell is but little more than half that delivered by a lead cell. Tales of the wonderful things that are to . be done by it are merely, so far as any information available at present is concerned, sheer nonsense;' There is no evidence beyond the statemnts referred to that anything further has bee". done. The battery that is going to wipe out the horse and everything else is the one invented a few years back. We appeal in the strongest terms that we know of to Mr Edison to, consult his own dignity, and the dignity of the profession he represents, anl to cease giving (childish statements to the world."