Silvanus P. Thompson

I need not enter into the details of what was done at this meeting.

Let it suffice to say that when it broke up in the small hours of the morning, it had been unanimously resolved that as many thousands of men as Mr. Edison might require should be immediately placed at his disposal, that as far as possible all the great manufacturing establishments of the country should be instantly transformed into factories where electrical ships and disintegrators could be built, and upon the suggestion of Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, the celebrated English electrical expert, seconded by Lord Kelvin, it was resolved that all the leading men of science in the world should place their services at the disposal of Mr. Edison in any capacity in which, in his judgment, they might be useful to him.

The members of this committee were disposed to congratulate one another upon the good work which they had so promptly accomplished when, at the moment of their adjournment, a telegraphic dispatch was handed to the president from Professor George E. Hale, the director of the Great Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin.

The telegram read, What's happening on Mars? Professor Barnard, watching Mars tonight with the forty-inch telescope, saw a sudden outburst of reddish light, which we think indicates that something has been shot from the planet.

I am glad I thought of the disintegrator, he said.

I shouldn't like to see that world down there laid waste again.

And it won't be, said Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson, gripping the handle of an electric machine.

Not if we can help it.

Excepting under very special conditions, steam is not available for such a purpose, seeing that it condenses long before it has risen any material distance in a column of cold water.

Quote, The present accumulator, remarked Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson in the year 1881, referring to the Farr storage batteries then in use, probably bears as much resemblance to the future accumulator as a glass bell jar used in chemical experiments for holding gas does to the gasometer of a city gasworks, or James Watt's first model steam engine does to the engines of the Atlantic steamer.

Unquote.

When Farr, having in 1880 improved upon the storage battery of Plante, sent his four-cell battery from Paris to Glasgow, carrying in it stored electrical energy, it was found to contain power equal to close upon a million foot-pounds, which is about the work done by a horsepower, during the space of half an hour.

During the first decade after Plante and Faur had made their original discoveries, the main drawback to the advancement of the electric accumulator for the storage of power owed its existence to the lack of precise knowledge among those placed in charge of storage batteries as to the destructive effects of impurities in the cells.

It is, however, now the rule that all acids and all samples of water used for the purpose must be carefully tested before adoption, and this practice in itself has greatly prolonged the average life of the accumulator cell.

The era of the large electric accumulator of the kind foreshadowed by Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson has not yet arrived, the simple reason being that electric power storage, apart from the special purposes of the subdivision and transmission for lighting, has not been tried on a large scale.

For the regulation and graduation of power it is exceedingly handy to be able to switch on a number of small accumulator cells for any particular purpose, and of course the degree of control held in the hands of the engineer must depend largely on the smallness of each individual cell and the number which he has at his command.