THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. 
325 
lead plate in the first place with a layer of red lead, or minium, 
made into a paste with water, and enclosing it in a sheath of 
felt. The two lead plates are then laid one over the other, as 
in Fig. 5, and rolled together, then placed in the lead vessel 
represented in Fig. 6. Thus constructed, the minium of one 
plate is itself oxidized by the charging current and the pre- 
liminary formation of peroxide from the lead which took place 
Fig. 5. 
in Plante’s original form is avoided, whilst the capacity of the 
Faure arrangement for electricity is considerably greater than 
that of Plante. How much greater, it is difficult to determine 
at this early date. One electrician claims a forty-fold increase of 
capacity, weight for weight, and another puts down the increase 
at only 20 per cent. It is tolerably certain, however, that a 
Faure battery weighing 165 lbs. is capable of storing a quantity 
of electric energy equivalent to one-horse power of work ex- 
Fig. 6. 
pended for an hour. Such a battery was recently sent from 
Paris to Sir William Thomson, at Glasgow; and that dis- 
tinguished physicist has published his opinion that an accumu- 
lator weighing fifteen hundredweight will suffice to operate for 
six hours from one charge, doing work at the uniform rate of 
one-horse power and with a loss of only 10 per cent of the 
original charge through leakage and so on. 
