AMPLIFIED ELECTRICITY CLAIM

Hokitika Guardian, 12 January 1929, Page 3

AMPLIFIED ELECTRICITY CLAIM

HOME LIGHTED FROM TINY . BATTERY. ST. HELENS (Lancashire), November 13. Ilf the claims made for what is known ns the- Harrison-Wood patent for an apparently innocent process connected with electricity are substantiated all present ideas about the manufacture, distribution, and use of electric current may become obsolete. It is asserted to be established that, contrary to all previous theories, electricity can be amplified. Government, it is stated, is keenly concerned about the invention and is making an immediate test of the apparatus. The inventor is Mr William Harrison, an elderly man who was formerly a clerk and who lives at St. Helens. His principal sponsor is Councillor Thomas Wood, who was chiefly instrumental in .bringing to St. Helens recently one of the largest silk factories in the country and who is interested financially in many important undertakings. , . The invention is patented in their names. It is the product of many years of unbroken trial and study on Mr Harrison’s part. The outcome is, it is asserted, a quite simple piece of machinery, which for a trifling cost will convert a small quantity of low-power electricity into relatively unlimited supplies of current at high voltage* LIGHTING .VILLA FROM BATTERY Attach Mr Harrison’s small machine to an equally small accumulator—about the size of ■ the ordinary wireless lowtension battery—and a man, the inventor claims, eouid illuminate an average-sized villa, 'for an indefinite period at a trifling cost. If the villa be already equipped with an electric’ strpplyj making the accumulator unnecessary, 'all that is required is admail plug in the socket of the nearest lanjp-lioldci', and the machine will light half ..a dozen 100-watt 200volt lamps for the cost of the original one.

Tfiis, it is stated, lias actually been done over a period of some months under Councillor Wood’s supervision, and it to be done again this week tfro the. Government test. If the claims for this discovery are sound, then a circuit can he perpetually energised j in other words, low-tension electricity is converted by the invention into high-tension current, which is harnessed to the ordinary processes of any electrified undertaking and can then be , employed again by existing appliances to recharging another accumulator in circuit. It is as though afman running a wireless set from one accumulator could at the same time continually charge another fof alternate use.