360 MR. GROVE ON THE GAS VOLTAIC BATTERY. 



Though carbonic acid and nitrogen appear to be neutral, and consequently might 

 be bracketed with the metals which do not decompose water, as forming the nodal 

 point or zero of the table, yet, in consequence of the peculiar action exercised by 

 them, and detailed (29.) and (30.), 1 have placed them above the metals*. 



(53.) The results embodied in my present and my former paper, I think sufficiently 

 indicate the field of research opened by the gas battery, a field which may of course 

 be indefinitely extended. I have never thought of the gas battery as a practical means 

 of generating voltaic power, though in consequence of my earlier researches, which 

 terminated in the nitric acid battery, having had this object in view, I have been 

 deemed by some to have proposed the gas battery for the same purpose ; there is, 

 however, a form of gas battery which I may here describe, which, where continuous 

 intensity or electromotive force is required, but the quantity of electricity is altogether 

 unimportant, appears to me to offer some advantages over any form of battery hitherto 

 constructed, and which, independently of any practical result, is, from circumstances 

 peculiar to the gas battery, not without interest. It is shown at figs. 4 and 5. A A' is a 

 long glass tube, with a series of legs or glass tubes attached to and opening into it ; 

 the lower extremities of these are open, and the main tube or channel A A' terminates 

 at the extremity A in a glass stopper, and at A' opens out into a funnel, as shown in the 

 figure. Into a series of glasses B B' are cemented platinum wires having attached 

 to them strips of platinized platinum foil, two to each glass, the one being four inches 

 long and half an inch wide, the other Ij incli long by one inch wide; the former 

 set are placed lower than the latter, so that when the glasses are filled with liquid 

 the former set shall be just covered, and the latter bisected by the water-rnark ; the 

 last glass B has no platinum. These platinum strips are connected metallically by ex- 

 ternal wires, the narrow platinum of one cell with the wide one of the next, and so on in 

 series. The glasses having been filled to the top of the narrow platinum with acidulated 

 water, let a piece of zinc be placed on a pedestal in the vessel B, and the stopper 

 being out of the extremity A, the apparatus A A' lowered into the glasses, the tubular 

 legs covering each one of the narrow platinum plates. The tubes will of course be 

 full of water, and the main channel full of atmospheric air; this will gradually be 

 displaced by the hydrogen ascending from the zinc, which hydrogen, in consequence 

 of the curve at A, will retain its position. When it is judged that the greater portion 

 of air has been expelled, the stopper at A, covered with a little grease, is to be in- 

 serted ; the hydrogen now will rapidly descend in all the tubes until the zinc is laid 

 bare, and then remain stationary. 



We have now a gas battery, the terminal wires of which will give the usual vol- 

 taic effects, the atmospheric air supplying an inexhaustible source of oxygen, and 

 the hydrogen being renewed as required by the liquid rising to touch the zinc; by 

 supplying a fresh piece of zinc when necessary, it thus becomes a self-charging battery, 



* I have been lately much struck with the difficulty of reconciling the theory of Grotthus with many of the 

 combinations in the gas battery, and have stated this difficulty in the Philosophical Magazine for Nov. 1845. 



