SUBMARINE INVENTION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 277, 20 May 1912, Page 6

SUBMARINE INVENTION

EDISON'S LATEST MARVEL. Thomas A. Edison, according to the New York press, has invented a storage battery for use in submarine boats which will enable crews to live beneath the water for 100 days, if jieed be, provided they have with them in the craft sufficient rations and water to last them and tubes filled with compressed oxygen or the raw chemicals needed for the manufacture of oxygen. That was announced by Edison's engineer and right-hand man, M. R. Hutchinson. He added that if such a battery had been in use under such conditions on the ill-starred Japanese submarine that sank intact, with her crew inside, those Japanese fighters would not have suffered injury from their submersion, as they could have manufactured a nevi rfailing supply of fresh air and have lived in safety, if not in comfort, until their disabled craft had been discovered, raised to the surface, and their period of imprisonment ended. Nor would the diary of the heroic hut hopeless commander of that submarine ever have been written how that brave crew died—not from wounds or lack of food or water, but from lack of that great essential of life, pure air. These men breathed and rebreathed the small amount of air in that tight little hull until it was so full of carbonic acid gas that it spelled death to breathe it again. With one of Edison's submarine batteries on board it would have purified the air of that carbonic acir gas, the compressed oxygen tubes would have supplied the other atmospheric element needed, and the submersion of the little Jap warship would have been a mere incident instead of a tragedy that stirred the sympathies of the world. Edison has not yet put his new invention on the market. He has just perfected it, and the machinery for its manufacture is being built. "Wo can charge this new submarine battery in an hour if we want to, and discharge it in 30 minutes," Hutchinson said. "It has two and one-half times the capacity of the storage battery now in use in submarines and occupies only the same space. Under conditions as they exist now it takes from six to seven hours to recharge one of the submarine batteries. Under normal conditions we can recharge our battery in three hours, and in one hour if emergency should seem to require it and that the power for such recharging is available. Put one of our batteries in a submarine the size of the Cuttlefish, put 14 men on board and submerge the craft, and those 14 men will be able to live 100 days. That means they could live down there three months and one week and come out in good condition." ...

"How would your Lattery accomplish that result?" the engineer was asked. "When men breathe, they exhale carbonic acid gas, which poisons the air and, in a close place, means death. The potash solution that we use in the new Edison submarine battery will absorb that carbonic acid gas as fast as it is ■manufactured by the exhalations of the men, and thereby purify the atmosphere and make the air fit to be breathed again. Of course, it will .be necessary for the men to have with them a means of supplying themselves with fresh oxygen. Tliey may be accomplished by carrying in the submarine tubes filled with compressed oxygen such as is used by physicians now in cases of extreme illness."