A MOTOR DRIVEN BY LIGHTNING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1831, 10 April 1907, Page 14

A MOTOR DRIVEN BY LIGHTNING.

So many people have become familiar with the word '‘motor'’ as an abbreviated term for automatically propelled vehicles that the title of this paragraph may excite fantastic visions of autocars driven along our roads by the power which now runs to waste in thunderstorms. That it may come to this is possible, though very far from probable. Still, an actual motor has been constructed and caused to rotate by electricity derived from the clouds, and it is suggested in an interesting article in tlie “Scientific American ’ that the principle may bo utilised to give power in sufficient quantity to be of practical use. V ithout actually subscribing to this, we may note with interest the ingenious construction of tlie toy—for that is all it is at present, at all events. Its working depends upon the mutual repulsiQn and attraction of bodies having a similar or. dissimilar charge of static electricity. Every one is familiar with the Slight attractive force which causes a small piece of paper to adhere to a stick of sealing-wax which has been vigorously rubbed, and with the repulsive force which makes the hairs on a oat s back fly apart under similar conditions. Imagine a very delicately poised disc of seme light and non-eonductive material having segments of tinfoil pasted upon it. Opposite this disc are stationary pole-pieces connected with a souice of high-tension electricity. The charge in these poles will indue an opposite charge in the insulated segments, which will consequently be attracted towards them and*cause the wheel to rotate. If each segment as it conies opposite the pole piece makes momentary contact with it, the opposite charge will be exchanged for a like charge, attraction will give place to repulsion, and the disc will continue to revolve in the same direction. Such a motor has been actually constructed in America and connected with the aerials of a wireless telegraphy system, with the result that during a thunderstorm the motor was found to revolve rapidly under the influence of the induced electricity from distant liglitning-flashes. Whether such a motor could ever he made of sufficient size to he of practical utility is decidedly questionable, hut the application of the principle is interesting.