EDITOR'S TABLE. 



409 



cent arrival of the steamship Labrador 

 with a number of these batteries on 

 board, which had been successfully used 

 during the passage in electric illumina- 

 tion, has revived both the interest and 

 the speculations about them in this 

 country, so that a few words on their 

 possibilities, and what has been so far 

 accomplished, may be here appropriate. 

 It is hardly necessary to say anything 

 regarding the construction of the Faure 

 cell, as it was fully described in the 

 August number of the " Monthly " of 

 last year, and has since received much 

 attention in the technical papers and by 

 the daily press. 



That a thoroughly commercial stor- 

 age-battery has a wide field of useful- 

 ness before it there can be no question. 

 Of the many uses to which it could 

 be applied, one of the most important, 

 perhaps, is as an element in a system 

 of electric distribution for both light 

 and power purposes. "With a storage- 

 battery in each house, a smaller electric 

 producing plant in continuous opera- 

 tion could take the place of the larger 

 one required without it, and distribu- 

 tion could be readily accomplished with 

 one set of mains, as, by simply connect- 

 ing groups of battery-cells in the prop- 

 er way, arc and incandescent lamps, as 

 well as various pieces of machinery, 

 could be run quite independently of 

 each other. 



The power that such a battery con- 

 fers of utilizing the results of work per- 

 formed at other times and places makes 

 it peculiarly well adapted for use in 

 isolated electric plant, such as would 

 be suitable for suburban and country 

 houses. Wind and water power are 

 both suitable for charging the battery, 

 but neither of them would commonly 

 be available as direct agents in main- 

 taining a current. It is not at all im- 

 possible that we may yet see the farm- 

 ers using the power of the wind, which 

 costs nothing beyond interest on in- 

 vestment in a mill and repairs, to light 

 their houses, and obtain all the power 



necessary for many of the operations 

 of the farm. 



Such batteries would also have a 

 not unimportant use in the propulsion 

 of cars on street and suburban rail- 

 ways, and it is quite within the bounds 

 of reasonable expectation to think that 

 they could in a good many cases dis- 

 place steam with advantage on ordinary 

 railways. The conditions requisite to 

 render this feasible are simply good 

 water-power facilities at sufficiently 

 frequent intervals along the line, or 

 such a proximity to coal-mines that the 

 electricity for the charging can be gen- 

 erated at the pit, and coal transporta- 

 tion, therefore, dispensed with. The 

 great advantages of a method of rail- 

 way propulsion which would dispense 

 with the fire, steam, and smoke of the 

 locomotive, are too obvious to need 

 specifying. Many other applications of 

 these batteries might be named, and the 

 sphere of their utility will doubtless con- 

 stantly enlarge with the progress of in- 

 dustry. 



In order, however, for the storage- 

 battery to take its place as an impor- 

 tant element in the growing industrial 

 applications of electricity, it must reach 

 a considerably higher efficiency than it 

 appears to have yet attained. The re- 

 sults obtained in the experiments on the 

 Faure battery at the Conservatoire des 

 Arts-et-Metiers, communicated to the 

 French Academy of Sciences in March 

 last, and which constitute the only trust- 

 worthy account yet given of the per- 

 formance of this batterv, certainlv leave 

 much to be desired. The experiments 

 were conducted to determine 1. The 

 mechanical labor expended in charging 

 the battery; 2. The quantity of elec- 

 tricity stored up during the charge; 3. 

 The quantity of electricity given out 

 during the charge ; and, 4. The elec- 

 trical work actually effected during the 

 discharge. They resulted in showing 

 that the battery returned forty per cent 

 of the total mechanical power spent in 

 I charging it, and sixty per cent of the 



