614, TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 
hour. He deprecated building electric motors with reciprocating movements 
and cranks; described the use of silver commutators; and mentioned the need of 
adjusting the lead given to the contacts. There was, he said, no reason to suppose 
that electric motors could be made as light as steam-engines. Even in the case of 
small motors of one-tenth or one-hundredth ofa horse-power, for light work, where 
the cost of power was of small consequence, a boy or a man turning a winch 
would probably furnish power at a cheaper rate. Mr. Alfred Smee agreed that 
the cost would be enormous for heavy work. Although motive power could not 
at present be produced at the same expense on a large scale by the battery as by 
coal, still they were enabled readily to apply the power at any distance from its 
source; the telegraph might be regarded as an application of motive power trans- 
mitted by electricity. Mr.G. P. Bidder considered that there had been a lamentable 
waste of ingenuity in attempting to bring electromagnetism into use ona large scale. 
Mr. Joule wrote to say that it was to be regretted that in irance the delusion as to 
the possibility of electromagnetic engines superseding steam still prevailed. He 
pointed out, as a result of his calorimeter experiments, that if it were possible so to 
make the electric engine work as to reduce the amount to a small fraction of the 
strength which it had when the engine was standing still, nearly the whole of 
the heat (energy) due to the chemical action of the battery might be evolved as 
work. The less the heat evolved, as heat, in the battery, the more perfect the 
economy of the engine. It was the lowerintensity of chemical action of zine 
as compared with carbon, and the relative cost of zinc and coal, which decided 
so completely in favour of the steam-engine. Mr. Hunt, replying to the 
speakers in the discussion, said that his endeavour had been to show that the 
impossibility of employing electromagnetism as a motive power lay with the 
present voltaic battery. Before a steam-engine could be considered, the boiler 
and furnace must be considered. So likewise must the battery if electric power 
were to become economical. Then the President, Mr, Robert Stephenson, wound 
up the discussion by remarking that there could be no doubt that the application 
of voltaic electricity, in whatever shape it might be developed, was entirely out 
of the question, commercially speaking. The mechanical application seemed to 
involve almost insuperable difficulties. The force exhibited *by electromagnetism, 
though very great, extended through so small a space as to be practically useless. A 
powerful magnet might be compared to a steam-engine with an enormous piston, 
but with exceedingly short stroke; an arrangement well known to be very 
undesirable. 
In short, the most eminent engineers in 1857 one and all condemned the idea 
of electric motive power as unpractical and commercially impossible. Even 
Faraday, in his lecture on ‘Mental Education’ in 1854, had set down the 
magneto-electric engine along with mesmerism, homeopathy, odylism, the 
caloric engine, the electric light, the sympathetic compass, and perpetual 
motion as coming in different degrees amongst ‘ subjects uniting more or less of 
the most sure and valuable investigations of science with the most imaginary 
and unprofitable speculation, that are continually passing through their various 
phases of intellectual, experimental, or commercial development, some to be 
established, some to disappear, and some to recur again and again, like ill weeds 
that cannot be extirpated, yet can be cultivated to no result as wholesome food 
for the mind,’ 
Fifty years later. 
Fifty years have fled, and Hunt, Grove, Smee, Tyndall, Cowper, Joule, 
Bidder, and Stephenson have long passed away. Lord Kelvin remains the sole 
and honoured survivor of that remarkable symposium. But the electric motor 
is a gigantic practical success, and the electric motor industry has become a 
very large one, employing thousands of hands. Hundreds of factories have 
discarded their steam-engines to adopt electric-motor driving. All travelling 
cranes, nearly all tramcars, are driven by electric motors. In the Navy and in 
much of the merchant service the donkey-engines have been replaced by electric 
motors, Electric motors of all sizes and outputs, from one-twentieth of a horse- 
