THE COMING MOTIVE POWER. 56L 



dynamos of the size known as D 3, furnished with proper reversing gear and 

 regulators, to serve as engines to drive the screw propeller. Either or both of 

 these motors could be " switched " into circuit at will. 



In charge of the electric engines was Mr. Gustave Phillipart, Jr., who has 

 been associated with Mr. Volckmar in the fitting up of the electric launch. Mr. 

 Volckmar himself and an engineer completed, with the writer, the quartet who 

 made the trial trip. After a few minutes' run down the river, and a trial of 

 the powers of the boat to go forward, slacken, or go astern at will, her head was 

 turned citywards, and we sped — I can not say steamed — silently along the south- 

 ern shore, running about eight knots an hour against the tide. At 4:37 London 

 bridge was reached, where the head of the launch was put about, while a long 

 line of onlookers from the parapets surveyed the strange craft that without steam 

 or visible power — without even a visible steersman — made its way against wind 

 and tide. Slipping down the ebb, the wharf at Millwall was gained at 5:01, thus 

 in twenty-four minutes terminating the trial trip of the Electricity. 



For the benefit of electricians I may add that the total electromotive force 

 of the accumulators was 96 volts, and that during the whole of the long run the 

 current through each machine was already maintained at 24 amperes. Calcula- 

 tion shows that this corresponds to an expenditure of electric energy at the rate 

 of 3 I II horse power. 



It is now forty-three years since the Russian Jacobi first propelled a boat 

 upon the waters of the Neva by aid of a large but primitive electro-magnetic en- 

 gine, worked by galvanic batteries of the old type, wherein zinc plates were dis- 

 solved in acid. Two years ago a little model boat was shown in Paris by M. 

 Trouve, actuated by accumulators of the Faure-Plante type. The present is, 

 however, not only the first electric boat that has been constructed in this country, 

 but the very first in which the electric propulsion of a boat has been undertaken 

 on a commercial scale. — London Times. 



THE COMING MOTIVE POWER. 



The simplest and one of the most clever- and interesting applications of 

 electricity to purposes of daily use was shown last week by Mr. C. Vibbard in 

 his Broad Street office, where a model of the apparatus and a track was laid the 

 length of the room. It is an automatic safety signal for railway trains. The 

 road is cut up into blocks, which may be only 500 feet or twenty miles in length, 

 as may be desired. A train coming on this block or section from either end 

 automatically operates a simple instrument, which puts all signals on either end of 

 the section, and on any switches that may immediately come in, at "danger." By 

 the same operation, when the train passes off the block the last car releases the in- 

 strument, which is hidden under the rails, and safety signals are in turn displayed. 

 There is no dependence upon the rails as conducting mediums, as has been the 

 case with former automatic signals, the electric power being conveyed by an in- 



