ELECTROCHEMISTRY 149 



much more highly efficient and accomplished chemist since 

 he became an electrochemist, and he is becoming more of 

 an electrochemist daily. 



Electrometallurgy applies electric energy to facilitating 

 the solution of the problems confronting the metallurgist. 

 Its birth is but recent, yet it has rendered invaluable serv- 

 ice ; it has made easy some of the most difficult extractions, 

 has produced several of the metals at a small fraction of 

 their former cost, and has put at our disposal in com- 

 mercial quantities and at practicable prices metals which 

 were formerly unknown or else mere chemical curiosities. 

 It has, further, refined many metals to a degree of purity 

 not previously known. The metallurgist is rapidly appre- 

 ciating the possibilities of electrometallurgical methods, 

 and they already form a considerable proportion of present 

 metallurgical practice. 



Applied electrochemistry, covering in general all of the 

 field just described, is therefore an important part of 

 chemistry and metallurgy, and is rapidly increasing in 

 importance. It is a new art, people are really only begin- 

 ning to understand its principles and to appreciate its 

 possibilities ; it is an art pursued by the most energetic and 

 enterprising chemists, with the assistance of the most 

 skilled electricians. Some of its most prominent exponents 

 are electrical engineers who have been attracted by the vast 

 possibilities opened up by these applications of electricity. 

 The chemists have worked with electricity like children 

 with a new toy, or a boy with a new machine; they have 

 had the novel experience of seeing what bonders their 

 newly applied agency could accomplish, and it is no 

 exaggeration to say that they have astonished the world 

 and themselves. 



THE AGENTS OF ELECTROCHEMISTRY 



The operating agent in electrochemistry is, of course, 

 electric energy, which may be used in three classes of 

 apparatus, viz. : 



