242 Mr. J. Young's Account of a new Voltaic Batten/, 



therefore the latter is unprotected. These papers require 

 likewise to be renewed occasionally, and they give to the con- 

 struction the character of a temporary arrangement. It is 

 true that glass or porcelain plates may be placed between the 

 contiguous coppers ; but these are inconvenient, and, in fact, 

 bring us back to the old construction of the trough partitioned 

 into cells. It is to be noticed too that these cojiper surfaces, 

 ■with the paper between them, are lost, and turned to no ac- 

 count in collecting electricity. 



After constructing several batteries with the interposed 

 papers, and becoming fully sensible of the annoyance which 

 the papers occasion, an arrangement of the plates suggested 

 itself which does not require interposed papers, and in which 

 both surfaces of the copper as well as of the zinc plates are 

 made available. Within the last eighteen months I have con- 

 structed several dozens of instruments of the construction to 

 be described, and having compared them experimentally with 

 batteries of the same extent of copper and zinc on Dr. Hare's 

 construction, I am prepared to state that, from the same sur- 

 faces of zinc, electricity the same in quantity and tension is 

 produced in both forms, but that in the new construction this 

 effect is produced with half the quantity of sheet copper, which 

 arises from both sides of the copper plates being presented to 

 surfaces of zinc. The new construction has, I believe, all the 

 advantages of approximation of the plates and compactness of 

 Dr. Hare's battery, which have been pointed by Mr. Faraday, 

 without the great and acknowledged drawback of the inter- 

 posed papers. 



The sheet copper and sheet zinc to be used in this battery 

 are first cut into long ribbons, of the breadth which it is in- 

 tended to give the plates. Suppose the ribbons two inches 

 broad ; both the copper and zinc ribbons are then divided 

 into lengths of five inches, and a portion cut out as in fig. 1. 

 The slip is thus divided into two squares of two inches each, 

 which are connected at A, and a piece is left projecting at B. 

 The zinc and copper sheets are cut up exactly in the same 

 way. Fig. 1 therefore represents either a single zinc or a 

 single copper plate. The plate is then bent at A, and pre- 

 sents the appearance represented in fig. 2. In fig. 3, we have 

 two plates, one of copper C, and the other of zinc Z, which 

 are exactly alike in construction, but are placed differently, 

 as shown in the figure. Thin projecting parts B B are sol- 

 dered together, and this is the only metallic communication 

 between them which is allowed to exist. Fig. 3, therefore, is 

 only one copper and one zinc plate, or it is one pair of plates. 

 Each pair is made up in the same way. In arranging a num- 



