A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



age batteries. As early as 1 803 Ritter had attempted 

 to make such a secondary battery. In 1843 Grove 

 also attempted it. But it was not until 1859, when 

 Gaston Plane he produced his invention, that any- 

 thing like a reasonably satisfactory storage battery 

 was made. Plane h6 discovered that sheets of lead 

 immersed in dilute sulphuric acid were very satisfac- 

 tory for the production of polarization effects. He 

 constructed a battery of sheets of lead immersed in 

 sulphuric acid, and, after charging these for several 

 hours from the cells of an ordinary Bunsen battery, 

 was able to get currents of great strength and consider- 

 able duration. This battery, however, from its con- 

 struction of lead, was necessarily heavy and cumber- 

 some. Faure improved it somewhat by coating the 

 lead plates with red-lead, thus increasing the capacity 

 of the cell. Faure' s invention gave a fresh impetus 

 to inventors, and shortly after the market was filled 

 with storage batteries of various kinds, most of them 

 modifications of Planche"'s or Faure' s. The ardor of 

 enthusiastic inventors soon flagged, however, for all 

 these storage batteries proved of little practical ac- 

 count in the end, as compared with other known 

 methods of generating power. 



Three methods of generating electricity are in general 

 use: static or frictional electricity is generated by 

 "plate" or "static" machines; galvanic, generated by 

 batteries based on Volta's discovery; and induced, or 

 faradic, generated either by chemical or mechanical 

 action. There is still another kind, thermo-electricity, 

 that may be generated in a most simple manner. In 

 1821 Seebecle, of Berlin, discovered that when a cir- 



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