18 MEMOIR OF ALFRED SMEE. [Chap. Ill 



In the Appendix, No. V., a description of this battery will be 

 found, illustrated by woodcuts, with a very full account for 

 the working of the same. 



The day following that on which Alfred Smee received the 

 gold medal from the Society of Arts for his battery, he was 

 married to Miss Hutchison, a young lady of Irish descent, 

 to whom he had been engaged at the early age of seyenteen, 

 The marriage took place at 8 o'clock on the morning of the 

 2nd of June, 1840 (before the Bank of England was opened 

 to the public), at St. Margaret's, Lothbury, the venerable Arch- 

 deacon HoUingsworth officiating, in the presence of six members 

 only of the two families. This privacy was occasioned through 

 my grandfather's official position at the Bank ; and as my mother 

 was an orphan, and Mr. and Mrs. Smee were her guardians, 

 she and her brother lived with them. Alfred Smee was ever a 

 most devoted husband, and his great affection for his wife is 

 shown in the dedication to her of ' My Garden.' 



In April 1840, he wrote a paper on electrotypes, which I have 

 inserted in its place in the Appendix, No. VI. 



The next paper of Alfred Smee's was a very important one : it 

 was the one through conducting the experiments for which he had 

 invented his battery, namely, 'On the Ferrosesquicyanuret of 

 Potassium.' It was read before the Eoyal Society on his birthday, 

 the 18th of June, 1840, only sixteen days after his marriage, and 

 it was printed in the ' London and Edinburgh Philosophical Maga- 

 zine :' see Appendix, No. VII. Although in this paper he pointed 

 out, before Schonbein's discovery of ozone, that electrolytic oxygen 

 converted the ferro- into the ferri-cyanide of potassium, yet for 

 some reason or other, best known to that learned body*, or to the 

 set or clique which at that time governed it, this highly im- 

 portant paper was, like its predecessor on the battery, ordered to 

 be deposited in the archives of the Society ; that is to say, it was 

 not allowed to be published in the Eoyal Society's ' Proceedings ' 

 or ' Transactions.' In consequence of this treatment Alfred Smee 

 did not for some time send any more papers to the Eoyal Society, 

 but published them elsewhere. 



' Electro-Metallurgy,' the first great work of Alfred Smee, waa 

 published on the 1st of December, 1840. 



Although most of the subjects contained in that book are now 

 generally known to the public, yet few only are aware that the 

 greater part, and indeed a very important part, of the science 

 of electro-metallurgy was the creation of his brain, and that at 



