A set of Plante's original cells was exhibited for the first time in March, 1860, before the Paris Academy of Sciences. Scientists admired and praised it, but the general public knew nothing of this great discovery thus brought to notice. Indeed, at that period little commercial value could be attached to such apparatus, since the accumulator had to be charged by means of primary batteries, and it was then well known that electrical energy, when produced by chemical means in voltaic cells, was far too expensive for any purpose outside the physical laboratory or the telegraph office. It was twenty years after this exhibition at the Academy of Sciences in Paris that public attention was drawn to the importance of storage batteries, and that Mr. Faure conceived the idea of constructing plates consisting of lead and oxides of lead. At that time the advantages accruing through a system of electrical storage could be fully appreciated, since electrical energy was already being produced by mechanical means through the medium of dynamo-electric machines. It was the dynamo machine which created the demand for the storage battery, and the latter was introduced anew to the public at large and to the capitalist with great pomp and enthusiasm. One of Faure's accumulators was sent to Sir William Thomson, and this eminent scientist in the course of experiments ascertained that a single cell, weighing 165 lb., can store two million foot-pounds of energy, or one horse power for one hour, and that the loss of energy in charging did not exceed 15 per cent. These results appeared highly encouraging. There we had a method of storing that could give out the greater part of the energy put in. The immense development which the electric transmission of energy was even at that early day expected to undergo pointed to the fact that a convenient method of receiving large quantities of transmitted energy, and of holding it in readiness until wanted, must be of the highest importance. Numerous applications of the Faure battery were at once suggested, and the public jumped to the conclusion that a thing for which so many uses could be instantly found must necessarily be a profitable investment, and plenty of money was provided forthwith, not with the idea of commencing careful experiments and developing the then crude invention, which would have been the correct thing, but for manufacturing tons of accumulators in their first and immature form.