POCKET ELECTRICITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 115, 4 November 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

POCKET ELECTRICITY.

Ml!. EDISON'S LATEST MARVEL. , A revolution in vehicular traffic which ] it is said will rapidly accelerate the electrification of railways; reorganise , the tramway systems to the extinction , of the trolley, the third rail and the ( central power-house, providing each car , with a power-house on its own wheels; ] solve the. problem of lighting in mines, and do many other marvellous things, is suggested by the last and by no means the least of Air. Edison's inventions. These are a few of the possibilities of the new storage battery which the American inventor has given to the ' world after concentrating upon it the unremitting industry of ten of the best years of his life. Exaggerated reports have been published throughout this period of the impossibility of his task, varied with premature reports of its success. But it is only within the past six months that Mr. Edison has sealed his long labor with the conviction that he has perfected his invention. The new storage battery, after an eleborate private testing period of three years, has at last become in America the property of the general public. It is only because the storage battery has been so backward, said one of Mr. Edison's active assistants to a London Standard representative, that electricity has not superseded all other forms of lighting and motive power to-day. People hear of this vast force harnessed at last by the ingenuity of man with perfectly stupendous possibilities for its employment; and they cannot understand why it has not been more generally applied to the purposes of traffic. With a cleaner, cheaper, safer and simpler method at hand, whose vast store of working power has been repeatedly demonstrated, why are all the old-fashioned dirt, delay and danger still allowed to prevail? The answer is very simple. It is that not until now has electricity for all its wonders been portable. You cannot carry it with you as you can petrol or coal, or any other potential motive power. Huge power-stations are necessary, from which the magic force radiates over wires and through rails to its destination. Electrification without this vital centre of reserve power to which every lamp or car which draws on it shall be rigidly and intricately connected has so far been extremely limited, the electric limousine being practically the onry exception. Thus the uses to , which electricity can be put have been very seriously curtailed. The individual store of power was what was lacking: electricity so flexibly adapted to modern demands that people could carry it about with them like petrol. • THE OLD BATTERIES. ; The old lead storage battery, of course, ■ has been of little use in this connection. i It paid for its independence by being i very heavy, very wasteful, and though i big and clumsy easily put out of repair. - All its variations have failed to attain a ; respectable place in competition with • petrol. In fact, thousands of merchants r who tried it because of the magic of the l name "electricity" abandoned it in favor > of this modest coal-oil, because the lat- • ter was found to be cheaper and more r reliable in the long run.

This was the situation as Mr. Edison found it. Now he claims that the battery with which he rescues electricity from its evil reputation will undoubtedly go down to posterity as one of his great inventions. It is the first electric battery of any importance made which is entirely constructed of metal. The container, the cover and both plates are constructed of niekelled steel, while the electrolyte, or the fluid contents of the cell, is so simple a compound as weak potash solution in distilled water, originality being added, however, by the addition of a dash of lithia. It is infinitely superior to the lead battery in every way. Tt weighs one-half as much as its clumsy predecessor, occupies from five-eighths to seven-eighths as much space, and has about the same initial power, which, however, actually increases with use, while that of the lead battery steadily decreases and wears out in a year. The new battery lasts practically for ever, there being nothing either to rust or corrode in its composition, and it is immune from breakage on account of its special corrugated steel contained. It has no acid like the lead cell, and is covered, so that there can be no dangerous spills. Tt is the only battery yet designed which will resist vibration. It can be filled and doctored by thp merest amateur, as its electric filler registers the proper amount by ringing a bell. Finally, the bold claim is made that there is no waste when it is standing idle, and. unlike the lead battery, it is not spoiled if it is allowed to run out.

The revolution which this storage battery will make in the uses of electricity is no matter of mere speculation, out of obvious scientific policy. Tn the first place, it mav to a considerable extent reorganise the traffic of the streets, ft is stated, for instance, that the "independent' tranicar could run. so far as cost is concerned, a distance of 100 miles on a little more than a shilling's worth of current. The only care that would have to be taken of the battery would be the occasional refilling of the container with clean water; onlv once every eight months would the batteries have to be recharged with the potash solution. One of the many other uses to which this marvellous portable battery will serve, especially on street tramway services and on an electric railway service, will be to reduce the dependence of each individual car on the power-house, to the minimum. This will be of great advantage during a strike, as the big supply station will no longer olTer a strategic opportunity to paralyse the whole service.

A MULTITUDK OF USES. The increased cheapness, the durability and the safety of the new device are also expected to add much stiumulus to an early electrification of the railways. This has already begun in America on the Pennsylvania lines near New York, where electric, locomotives meet trains bound for the American metropolis '2O miles from the. city, replace the steam engine, and pull the train into a smokeless marble station. Another extensive railway use of the steel battery will probably be its employment on the huge baggage trucks which have to pass from one side of a station to the other. Instead of pushing this huge truck laboriously along through the crowd a railwayman would merely turn a lever from a seat on the front of the truck, and it would roll along of its own accord. So far as lighting goes, when the selfcontained motor gets under way there should not be an ignition wire above

ground. Every house would be equipped with its own supply, a likelihood which will surely be welcomed by people, who live out in the country, where power stations are few and far between. Hut the most important use in lighting that is immediately suggested is the incalculable value it should prove in the mining industry. The great disaster at Pretoria I'it last December, where over 300 men lost their lives, is popularly supposed to have been caused by crossed wires. Electricity, even with wires, is a vast improvement over the miners' lamps, which have been the cause of so many fatal accidents. But an electric system wituot wires should practically solve the problem of lighting in mines for ever. The conventional dry batter, so far the only portable electric device which will produce a light of convenient proportions, is soon exhausted and almost useless to recharge, while the steel cell, though slightly heavier, will produce current enough for many a miner's eighthour day.

So the story could go on of the imperfect mechanisms of our time that are to be improved and made more complicatedly adequate to the maze of demands now made on them by means of Edison's latest excursion into inventive science.