The Development Of The Edison Storage Battery - 3

The Development Of The Edison Storage Battery - 3

Now, however, after these many months of arduous toil, in which he had examined and

tested practically all the known elements in numerous chemical combinations, the electric

action he sought for had been obtained, thus affording him the first inkling of the secret

that he had industriously tried to wrest from Nature. It should be borne in mind that from

the very outset Edison had disdained any intention of following in the only tracks then

known by employing lead and sulphuric acid as the components of a successful storage

battery. Impressed with what he considered the serious inherent defects of batteries made

of these materials, and the tremendously complex nature of the chemical reactions taking

place in all types of such cells, he determined boldly at the start that he would devise a

battery without lead, and one in which an alkaline solution could be used-- a form which

would, he firmly believed, be inherently less subject to decay and dissolution than the

standard type, which after many setbacks had finally won its way to an annual production

of many thousands of cells, worth millions of dollars.

Two or three thousand of the first experiments followed the line of his well-known

primary battery in the attempted employment of copper oxide as an element in a new type

of storage cell; but its use offered no advantages, and the hunt was continued in other

directions and pursued until Edison satisfied himself by a vast number of experiments

that nickel and iron possessed the desirable qualifications he was in search of.

This immense amount of investigation which had consumed so many months of time, and

which had culminated in the discovery of a series of reactions between nickel and iron

that bore great promise, brought Edison merely within sight of a strange and hitherto

unexplored country. Slowly but surely the results of the last few thousands of his

preliminary experiments had pointed inevitably to a new and fruitful region ahead. He

had discovered the hidden passage and held the clew which he had so industriously

sought. And now, having outlined a definite path, Edison was all afire to push ahead

vigorously in order that he might enter in and possess the land.

It is a trite saying that "history repeats itself," and certainly no axiom carries more truth

than this when applied to the history of each of Edison's important inventions. The

development of the storage battery has been no exception; indeed, far from otherwise, for

in the ten years that have elapsed since the time he set himself and his mechanics,

chemists, machinists, and experimenters at work to develop a practical commercial cell,

the old story of incessant and persistent efforts so manifest in the working out of other

inventions was fully repeated.

Very soon after he had decided upon the use of nickel and iron as the elemental metals

for his storage battery, Edison established a chemical plant at Silver Lake, New Jersey, a

few miles from the Orange laboratory, on land purchased some time previously. This

place was the scene of the further experiments to develop the various chemical forms of

nickel and iron, and to determine by tests what would be best adapted for use in cells

manufactured on a com- mercial scale. With a little handful of selected experimenters

gathered about him, Edison settled down to one of his characteristic struggles for

supremacy. To some extent it was a revival of the old Menlo Park days (or, rather,

nights). Some of these who had worked on the preliminary experiments, with the addition

of a few new-comers, toiled together regardless of passing time and often under most

discouraging circumstances, but with that remarkable esprit de corps that has ever

marked Edison's relations with his co-workers, and that has contributed so largely to the

successful carrying out of his ideas.