Figure 66. — Page's rotating motor. From 

 American Journal of Science, 1838, vol. 35, 

 p. 262. 



was a paddle wheel, where an armature was kept in 

 constant motion by a commutator switching on a 

 field to tease the armature ahead at the right time. 

 The engines of Ritchie, Jacobi, Davenport, Davidson, 

 and Froment were of this second form. After mid- 

 century there was a further proliferation of electric 

 motors, but no new basic types were introduced until 

 the advent of AC power. 



In spite of the sanguine hopes of many of the early 

 inventors, most scientists and engineers could not see 

 any advantage in the use of electric power over that 

 of steam. The greatest difficulty in the use of elec- 

 tricity lay in the relatively high cost of production of 

 electrical power in comparison with that of steam. 

 Instead of consuming coal in a chemical reaction 

 that produced heat and the expansion of water, one 

 dissolved a metal in an acid in a chemical reaction 



Figure 67. — Page's reciprocating motor. From 

 American Journal of Science, 1838, vol. 35, 

 p. 264. 



that produced an electrical current. Metals and 

 acids were much more expensive than coal and water. 

 A few engineers and scientists calculated just how 

 much more expensive it was to produce an electrical 

 current than it was to produce steam. In 1846 

 Scoresby and Joule '" estimated that an electric 

 motor could raise 80 pounds a distance of 1 foot for 

 each grain of zinc consumed, while the best Cornish 

 steam engine would raise 143 pounds the same distance 

 for each grain of coal that was burned. Page had 

 estimated the cost of his 1850 motor as greater than 

 that of the cheaper steam engines but less than that 

 of the highest priced ones."^ Robert Hunt made an 

 even more adverse estimate than Scoresby and Joule 

 had made when he calculated in 1850 that electrical 

 power was 25 times more expensive than steam 

 power."' Obviously the electric motor could not 



1" William Scoresby and James Joule, "Experiments and 

 Observations on the Mechanical Powers of Electro-Magnetism, 

 Steam and Horses," Philosophical Magazine, 1846, vol. 28, 

 pp. 448-455; also Philosophical Magazine, 1850, vol. 36, pp. 

 550-552. 



i'2 Charles Page, op. cit. (footnote 107). 



"3 Robert Hunt, "On the Application of Electro-Magnetism 

 as a Motive Power," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1850, 

 vol. 20, pp. 334-336. 



PAPER 28: DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE 1 9TH CENTURY: I 



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