224 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thanks to electricity, gone the length, of combining his wires and 

 magnets into something very like a conscious and responsive 

 brain : his intelligence culminates in duplicating itself. 



Prodigal as electricity is of gifts to the mechanic and engineer, 

 it as generously multiplies the resources of their friend and part- 

 ner, the chemist. Electricity, we must not forget, was presented 

 to the world as a stream of tolerably even flow, by a process of 

 chemical undoing, in Volta's crown of cups. If chemical taking 

 apart can yield a current, a current can in turn be used to build, 

 as every piece of plating proves. Yet to construct a battery in 

 which both processes shall alternate, without undue weight or 

 waste of material, is a task as yet not satisfactorily accomplished, 

 despite constant and ingenious attack. A thoroughly good and 

 simple storage battery would mean nearly as much for electric 

 art as the dynamo. From a dynamo it would receive currents de- 

 rived from wind or water powers, or from engines temporarily 

 laden below their capacity, and use these currents to restore a 

 metal from its solution by a process exactly that of electroplat- 

 ing. Then, on demand, it would yield electricity once more by 

 surrendering this metal to solution, as a common voltaic battery 

 does. If the chemist has thus far been somewhat baffled by the 

 problems of the storage battery, he has had better fortune in 

 other fields of endeavor. Electricity joined to heat hands him a 

 two-edged sword of irresistible cleaving power. Compounds, 

 such as those of chromium, of peculiar refractoriness, are readily 

 parted in the electric furnace of Moissan, and elements once ex- 

 tremely rare are now marketed in quantity at prices steadily fall- 

 ing. A generation ago aluminum was so scarce and dear that it 

 was formed into jewelry ; to-day the metal has been so cheapened 

 by electricity that it finds a ready sale as kitchen ware. Minute 

 diamonds and rubies of electric manufacture are now competing 

 with the product of the mine, and materials used on a gigantic 

 scale in the arts caustic soda, bleaching powder, and the like are 

 produced at less cost than ever by electrical agency. The chemist, 

 when he chooses, can beat his electrical sword into a trowel, and 

 build compounds which seem prophetic of the day when the slow 

 elaborations of the farm and orchard shall make way for the arti- 

 ficial synthesis of sugars, oils, and starch. 



Greater than all the wealth created by electricity in workshop 

 or laboratory are its aids to pure research. The chief physical 

 generalization of our time, the persistence of force, came into 

 view only when electricity was recognized as a phase of energy, 

 only when electrical means of measurement had become trust- 

 worthy. It is because men of absolutely disinterested spirit, like 

 Faraday and Henry, devoted themselves to ascertaining the laws 

 of electricity that we have to-day the telegraph, the telephone, and 



