Curiosities of Science, Past and Present: A Book for Old and YoungTimbs, John
Science
Curiosities of Science, Past and Present: A Book for Old and Young
Timbs, John
Science
Next as to a _Quantity Battery_ employed in these investigations. To
effect a charge, and transmit a current through some thousand miles of
the Atlantic Cable, Mr. Whitehouse had a piece of apparatus prepared
consisting of twenty-five pairs of zinc and silver plates about the
20th part of a square inch large, and the pairs so arranged that
they would hold a drop of acidulated water or brine between them. On
charging this Lilliputian battery by dipping the plates in salt and
water, messages were sent from it through a thousand miles of cable
with the utmost ease; and not only so,--pair after pair was dropped
out from the series, the messages being still sent on with equal
facility, until at last only a single pair, charged by one single drop
of liquid, was used. Strange to say, with this single pair and single
drop distinct signals were effected through the thousand miles of the
cable! Each signal was registered at the end of the cable in less than
three seconds of time.
The entire length of wire, iron and copper, spun into the cable amounts
to 332,500 miles, a length sufficient to engirdle the earth thirteen
times. The cable weighs from 19 cwt. to a ton per mile, and will bear a
strain of 5 tons.
The _Perpetual Maintenance Battery_, for working the cable at the
bottom of the sea, consists of large plates of platinated silver and
amalgamated zinc, mounted in cells of gutta-percha. The zinc plates in
each cell rest upon a longitudinal bar at the bottom, and the silver
plates hang upon a similar bar at the top of the cell; so that there
is virtually but a single stretch of silver and a single stretch of
zinc in operation. Each of the ten cells contains 2000 square inches
of acting surface; and the combination is so powerful, that when the
broad strips of copper-plate which form the polar extensions are
brought into contact or separated, brilliant flashes are produced,
accompanied by a loud crackling sound. The points of large pliers
are made red-hot in five seconds when placed between them, and even
screws burn with vivid scintillation. The cost of maintaining this
magnificent ten-celled Titan battery at work does not exceed a shilling
per hour. The voltaic current generated in this battery is not,
however, the electric stream to be sent across the Atlantic, but is
only the primary power used to call up and stimulate the energy of a
more speedy traveller by a complicated apparatus of “Double Induction
Coils.” Nor is the transmission-current generated in the inner wire
of the double induction coil,--and which becomes weakened when it has
passed through 1800 or 1900 miles,--set to work to print or record the
signals transmitted. This weakened current merely opens and closes the
outlet of a fresh battery, which is to do the printing labour. This
relay-instrument (as it is called), which consists of a temporary and
permanent magnet, is so sensitive an apparatus, that it may be put in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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