On a 

 New Electric Current Breaker. 



(Preliminnry Notice). 



By Kr. Birkeland. 



1 he usual way, and up to tlie present the only one employed, of 

 suddenly breaking off an electric current, is the opening of the conducting 

 circuit itself As a matter of fact, by this means an igneous phenomenon 

 is produced, which is more or less violent according to the intensity 

 and tension of the interrupted current. This method may be modified 

 in various ways, by allowing the current, as it is broken, to take new 

 directions through greater and greater non-inductive resistances, whereby 

 the effect of the igneous phenomenon in question may be considerably 

 reduced. 



The simplest way of avoiding the detrimental burning and fusion 

 of current-breakers of this kind, must be, theoretically, to divide the 

 current into parts, and break it off at several places of fracture simul- 

 taneously. 



Let us, for instance, suppose a steady current of m ampères and « 

 volts. By the following proceeding, one ampère, at one volt, may be 

 obtained at each place of breaking. 



The main conductor is divided into m parallel, identical branches 

 arranged as equisdistant generatrices on a circular cylinder, and into 

 each branch are put n exactly similar breakers, in regular series — 

 total, m . n breakers — all of which are broken off simultaneously. 



Practically, it will prove impossible to obtain absolute simultane- 

 ousness at all the breakers; and therefore, as the current is broken off 



Vid.-Selsk. Skrilter. M.-N. Ki. 1802 No. H. 



