Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/352

346 made as light as steam-engines. Even in the case of small motors of one tenth or one hundredth of a horse-power, for light work, where the cost of power was of small consequence, a boy or a man turning a winch would probably furnish power at a cheaper rate. Mr. Alfred Smee agreed that the cost would be enormous for heavy work. Although motive power could not at present be produced at the same expense on a large scale by the battery as by coal, still they were enabled readily to apply the power at any distance from its source; the telegraph might be regarded as an application of motive power transmitted by electricity. Mr. G. P. Bidder considered that there had been a lamentable waste of ingenuity in attempting to bring electromagnetism into use on a large scale. Mr, Joule wrote to say that it was to be regretted that in France the delusion as to the possibility of electromagnetic engines superseding steam still prevailed. He pointed out, as a result of his calorimeter experiments, that if it were possible so to make the electric engine work as to reduce the amount to a small fraction of the strength which it had when the engine was standing still, nearly the whole of the heat (energy) due to the chemical action of the battery might be evolved as work. The less the heat evolved, as heat, in the battery, the more perfect the economy of the engine. It was the lower intensity of chemical action of zinc as compared with carbon, and the relative cost of zinc and coal, which decided so completely in favor of the steam-engine. Mr. Hunt, replying to the speakers in the discussion, said that his endeavor had been to show that the impossibility of employing electromagnetism as a motive power lay with the present voltaic battery. Before a steam-engine could be considered, the boiler and furnace must be considered. So likewise must the battery if electric power were to become economical. Then the president, Mr. Robert Stephenson wound up the discussion by remarking that there could be no doubt that the application of voltaic electricity, in whatever shape it might be developed, was entirely out of the question, commercially speaking. The mechanical application seemed to involve almost insuperable difficulties. The force exhibited by electromagnetism, though very great, extended through so small a space as to be practically useless. A powerful magnet might be compared to a steam-engine with an enormous piston, but with exceedingly short stroke; an arrangement well known to be very undesirable.

In short, the most eminent engineers in 1857 one and all condemned the idea of electric motive power as unpractical and commercially impossible. Even Faraday, in his lecture on "Mental Education" in 1854, had set down the magneto-electric engine along with mesmerism, homeopathy, odylism, the caloric engine, the electric light, the sympathetic compass, and perpetual motion as coming in different degrees