EDISON'S LATEST INVENTION.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12767, 13 April 1910, Page 4

EDISON'S LATEST INVENTION.

Mr. Edison believes that he has discovered a new principle in electric battery construction, and that the motor cars and tramway cars of the future will be propelled by electricity, supplied from batteries that will be supplied ens(beasily and rapidly recharged at any generating station. There has been a hitch somewhere however for although the great inventor has stated at intervals, that the battery is a proved success it has not yet been placed upon the market as an article of commerce. Towards, the end of February a tramway car equipped-with a series of the batteries was tested in New York, and it achieved a considerable measure of success. The. car had b?en designed by Mr. Ralph Beach, an engineer in Mr. Edison's employ. He stated that the battery had been perfected two years previously but certain technical difficulties had lain in the, way of its practical use for traction purposes; A sum of over £10,000 had been spent on experiments before a suitable design was evolved, and the battery was now doing a lot more real work than most pctople believed. Mr. Edison had stated that the car would cover a distance of 150 miles on one charge, but as a matter of fact it gave put on its sisty-sixth mile. Even this measure of success, however, astonished the experts present, more' especially as the cost of running per mile proved to be lower than that of the ordinary trolley car. The car could run on any rails, and of course, did not require overhead wires, so that an enormous saving in cost of construction could be effected by its use* "We have already received orders from Alaska and from New Zealand and the Spanish West Indies" remarked Mr. Beach. "I call the car a canned current' car. We have a capacity at the plant now of a car a day, but will soon increase it." The development of the invention will be watched with keen interest by everyone interested in electric traction