Secondary Batteries: their Theory, Construction, and Use

Abstract

MR. SWINBURNE in his presidential address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers remarked that it was wonderful that we had the lead cell at all, seeing that we owed it to a chance observation of Plante. On a perusal of Mr. Wade's book it seems even more remarkable that the “chance observation of Planto” has been developed into so indispensable an adjunct of electrical engineering. It is usually the boast of the electrical engineer that his branch of engineering can lay claim to being an exact science in the truest sense. He is able to base on a solid foundation of theory the design of a 4000 H.P. alternator or a sensitive millivoltmeter, and feel confident that the result will be what he requires. Fie can work contentedly with these things, because he feels that he knows to what their behaviour under different conditions is due. But with the accumulator it is different. Probably nine electrical engineers. out of ten do not know what is the cause of the E.M.F. given by the combination lead / sulphuric acid / lead peroxide, but imagine that, like Topsy, “it just growed.” Still less would they be able to give any plausible explanation of the frequently erratic behaviour of accumulators. This is partly due to a narrow-minded contempt for chemistry, more or less inherent in the electrical engineer in his student days, and only regretted when the time for studying first principles is past. But the ignorance must be also partly ascribed to the unsatisfactory condition of the knowledge amongst experts in the subject.

Secondary Batteries: their Theory, Construction, and Use.

By E. J. Wade. Pp. ix + 492. (London: The Electrician Printing and Publishing Co., Ltd.) Price 10s. 6d. net.