[ 39 1 
III. A description of an extensive series of the Water Battery ; with an Account of 
some Experiments made in order to test the relation of the Electrical and the 
Chemical Actions which take place before and after completion of the P oltaic Circuit. 
By John P. Gassiot, Esq., F.R.S. 
Received December 7, 1843, — Read January 25, 1844. 
1. IN a paper, which I communicated to the Royal Society in 1839, and which was 
honoured by insertion in the Transactions of the following- year, I described a series of 
experiments made with some powerful voltaic batteries, for the purpose of determi- 
ning the possibility of obtaining a spark before the completion of the voltaic circuit. 
I was therein enabled to establish a few facts respecting polar tension, or rather 
respecting the absence of any notable degree of it in the batteries I described* ; for 
instance, I proved that, with 320 series of Professor Daniell’s constant battery, polar 
tension was not evinced adequate to the striking distance of swwoth of an inch ; nor 
was I more successful in obtaining it with a water battery of 1024 seriesT? constructed 
by the same gentleman. I also stated that, according to the present theoretical 
views of the action of the voltaic battery, with the apparatus I then used, it ought to 
have taken place ; and that, if by a still more powerful apparatus it could not be 
obtained, the theory must, in some way or other, be incorrect. 
2. The preceding negative facts are not without their value in a scientific point of 
view ; they show us, at least, a certain limit within which the anticipated effects 
could not be obtained. At the same time I could not fail to admit that they were 
anything but conclusive, as to the actual question of the possibility of obtaining the 
spark before the circuit was completed. That I am justified in calling the spark, 
under such circumstances, an anticipated effect, may be fairly assumed, because 
every electrician is aware that the terminals of a voltaic series invariably evince a 
certain amount of tension^; and as spark is but a consequence of tension exalted 
to a maximum, it is only fair to anticipate that, by increasing the tension, it would 
be obtained. 
3. A short time after the publication of the paper to which I have alluded, a com- 
munication reached me from my friend Mr. Crosse, of Broomfield, Somersetshire, 
wherein he stated that, with 1626 cells of copper and zinc, excited with river water, 
he had succeeded in obtaining a spark between slips of tinfoil pasted on sealing wax. 
This communication I immediately forwarded for publication in the Philosophical 
Magazine for September 1840. 
* Philosophical Transactions, 1840, p. 184, § 10. t Ibid. § 15. J Ibid. § 14. 
