Electro-Magnetic Machine. 3 



weight is attached and raised by the winding of a rope. As soon as 

 the small battery, destined to generate the power, is properly con- 

 nected with the machine, and duly excited by diluted acid, the mo- 

 lion begins, by the horizontal movement of the iron cross, with its 

 circular segments or flanges. By the galvanic connection, these 

 crosses and their connected segments are magnetized, acquiring north 

 and south polarity at their opposite ends, and being thus subjected to 

 the attracting and repelling ,force of the circular fixed magnets, a 

 rapid horizontal movement is produced, at the rate of two hundred 

 to three hundred revolutions in a minute, when the small battery was 

 used, and over six hundred with a calorimotor of large size. The 

 rope was wound up with a weight of fourteen pounds attached, and 

 twenty eight pounds were lifted from the floor. The movement is 

 instantly stopped by breaking the connexion with the battery, and 

 then reversed by simply interchanging the connexion of the wires of 

 the battery with those of the machine, when it becomes equally rapid 

 in the opposite direction. 



The machine, as a philosophical instrument, operates with beauti- 

 ful and surprising effect, and no reason can be discovered why the 

 motion may not be indefinitely continued. It is easy to cause a very 

 gradual flow of the impaired or exhausted acid liquor from, and of 

 fresh acidulated water into, the receptacle of the battery, and when- 

 ever the metal of the latter is too much corroded to be any longer 

 efficient, another battery may be instantly substituted, and that even 

 before the connexion of the old battery is broken. As to the energy 

 of the power, it becomes at once a most interesting inquiry, whether 

 it admits of indefinite increase ? To this inquiry it may be replied, 

 that provided the magnetism of both the revolving cross and of the 

 fixed circle can be indefinitely increased, then no reason appears 

 why the energy of the power cannot also be indefinitely increased. 

 Now, as magnets of the common kind, usually called permanent mag- 

 nets, find their limits within, at most, the power of lifting a kvr hun- 

 dred pounds, it is obvious that the revolving galvanic magnet must, in 

 its efficiency, be limited, by its relation to the fixed magnet. But it 

 is an important fact, discovered by experience, that the latter is soon 

 impaired in its power by the influence of the revolving galvanic mag- 

 net, which is easily made to surpass it in energy, and thus, as it were, 

 to overpower it. It is obvious, therefore, that the fixed magnet, as 

 well as the revolving, ought to be magnetized by galvanism, and then 

 there is every reason to believe that the relative equality of the two, 



