44 Self-sustaining Voltaic Battery. 
The construction which I have devised will, I think, obviate 
many of the difficulties attending telegraphing ; and the prinei- 
ples of electro-chemistry, and even experience, justify me in say- 
ing that batteries may be constructed to be buried in the earth or 
sunken in the sea, which will certainly and uniformly continue 
in action for very long periods, even for a hundred years. 
n my battery there is no new element, neither is the form 
such as to attract attention in respect to anything i in it mate- 
rially different from the batteries now in use. It is only in all 
the parts being constructed with rigid adherence to the princi- 
les of electro-chemistry that its peculiarity consists, and there- 
fore a consideration of the principles is necessary to its appre- 
ciation. 
A charged voltaic battery may be considered as a factory of 
arrangement of the parts. A furnace in action consumes the fuel; 
whether the generated caloric be applied to use or suffered to run 
waste, the chemical affinity will sooner or later consume the fuel; 
and though the action may be diminished to some extent by cut- 
ting off some of the conditions of combustion, the extent of that 
action will Bo on the construction of the furnace. Jf a fur- 
nace could be made so that we might draw off the requisite 
amount of caloric to boil a pound of water just as it might be re- 
quired, and retain the residue until we again had occasion to use 
the fire, then snch a furnace would be a storehouse of caloric, just 
as a granary is a storehouse of grain from which we draw a sup- 
ply, and keep the residue in store. 
e same remark will apply to the battery; once charged, the 
chemical affinity consumes the material sooner or later, usefully 
or not, and we can entirely arrest action only by gre 
Much indeed can be done by modifying the conditions of action 
but, as in the furnace, all will depend on the construction. 
o make a battery which can keep the action in reserve, is 
the problem of a depot of electricity. 
The uncontrollable nature of the voltaic conditions, I conceive, 
to be the cause why batteries have not hitherto been constructed 
with reference to the whole amount of force, as well as to the 
strength or rate of working. 
Previous to my own efforts I know at no attempts at putting 
a quantity of galvanic material in store ready for action just when 
required, 
A cell of the reservoir battery is is in form a four-sided prism of 
reer eight inches or see inches wide and ten —_ 
cep 
