Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/573

Rh the most successful by Duboscq, Foucault, and Serrin, who have been succeeded by Holmes, Siemens, Browning, Carré, Gramme, Loutin, and others. By such arrangements the first difficulty was practically overcome; but the second, a graver one, is probably inseparable from the construction of the voltaic battery. It arises from the operation of that inexorable law which, throughout the material universe, demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, refusing to yield the faintest glow of heat or glimmer of light without the expenditure of an absolutely equal quantity of some other power. Hence, in practice, the desirability of any transformation must depend upon the value of the product in relation to that of the power expended. The metal zinc can be burned like paper; it might be ignited in a flame, but it is possible to avoid the introduction of all foreign heat and to burn the zinc in air of the temperature of this room. This is done by placing zinc-foil at the focus of a concave mirror, which concentrates to a point the divergent electric beam, but which does not warm the air. The zinc burns at the focus with a violet flame, and we could readily determine he amount of heat generated by its combustion. But zinc can be burned not only in air but in liquids. It is thus burned when acidulated water is poured over it; it is also thus burned in the voltaic battery. Here, however, to obtain the oxygen necessary for its combustion, the zinc has to dislodge the hydrogen with which the oxygen is combined. The consequence is, that the heat due to the combustion of the metal in the liquid falls short of that developed by its combustion in air, by the exact quantity necessary to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen. Fully four fifths of the total heat is used up in this molecular work, only one fifth remaining to warm the battery. It is upon this residue that we must now fix our attention, for it is solely out of it that we manufacture our electric light.

Before you are two small voltaic batteries of ten cells each. The two ends of one of them are united by a thick copper wire, while into the circuit of the other a thin platinum wire is introduced. The platinum glows with a white heat, while the copper wire is not sensibly warmed. Now an ounce of zinc, like an ounce of coal, produces by its complete combustion in air a constant quantity of heat. The total heat developed by an ounce of zinc through its union with oxygen in the battery is also absolutely invariable. Let our two batteries, then, continue in action until an ounce of zinc in each of them is consumed. In the one case the heat generated is purely domestic, being liberated on the hearth where the fuel is burned, that is to say in the cells of the battery itself. In the other case, the heat is in part domestic and in part foreign—in part within the battery and in part outside. One of the fundamental truths to be borne in mind is that the sum of the foreign and domestic—of the external and internal—heats is fixed and invariable. Hence, to have heat outside you must draw upon the heat within. hese remarks apply to the electric light. By the intermediation of the