Rusty lead, so to speak, so connected with bright lead,
has a high electromotive force. Oxygen makes lead rusty, and hydrogen
makes it bright. Oxygen and hydrogen are the two gases cast off when
water is subjected to a current. (See _ante_ under
_Electrolysis_) So Augustin Plante, the inventor of as much as we
yet have of what is called a storage or secondary battery, suspended two
plates of lead in water, and when a current of electricity was passed
through it hydrogen was thrown off at one plate, making it bright, and
oxygen at the other plate, peroxydizing its surface. When the current
was removed the altered plates, connected by a wire, would send off a
current which was in the opposite direction from the first, and this
would continue until the plates were again in their original condition.
This is the principle and mode of action of the storage battery. So far
it has assumed many forms. Scores of modifications have been invented
and patented. The leaden plates have taken a variety of forms, yet have
remained leaden plates, one cleaned and the other fouled by the
electrolytic action of a current, and giving off an almost equivalent
current again by the return process.
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