ought to take the subject up seriously and not treat it as a sort of joke. The storage battery of to-day is not constructed for traction work. It is all very nice when you stand it down in the cellar and light your house or run a large central station, or put it on shipboard, but for traction purposes the type of cell has got to be radically changed. One of the points Mr. Duryea made was the length of time required to change or charge the storage battery carriage. The time required to change batteries in an electric carriage is about a minute. The batteries slide in on racks, making connections by the simple closing of a switch, and I cannot see any very great objection to that. But I am very greatly interested in some tests now; in fact I made a test to-day on something that looked very promising in the storage battery line. We charged the cell up in three and a half hours at a very high rate, and we discharged that same celi in about two hours and three-quarters with an efficiency of about 65 per cent. This cell, it seems to me, can be so arranged that it will last indefinitely. It is simply a question of the conductor in the positive plate wearing out; and a new one can be substituted. In fact we know that the active material in a storage battery lasts forever. It is just simply that the material becomes loosened from the support plate and falls down into the cell, and I believe abroad they propose picking that material up and putting it back again, and I can see no reason why this cannot be done in a battery for electric vehicles. Another point that has to be brought up in all these things is what we are going to get for the carriages after we build them. In going over these different subjects we find, so far as we can determine now, that the electric vehicle is the cheapest vehicle to construct, and as the President remarked to-night, 30 to 35 miles is a good range for any vehicle. In fact I believe the large department stores in New York City figure on 25 miles as a day's trip for their delivery wagons. That is the greatest number of miles that they run, and it would seem that such a system as they use might furnish the best data that we could gather on the subject of what the length of a run would necessarily be. In all probability no private person is going to use a carriage that he wants to run over 20 or 25 miles a day. The question of running further is simply a question of putting on some more batteries or making the carriage into a sort of railway train. I think the generally accepted practice is when anybody wants to go in this country over 25 or 30 miles they get on board a train, and they take an express train at that. When they go out for a drive they do not go that number of miles. I think that the electric carriage to-day seems to have a brighter future than any of the others for its use, and that is for a light pleasure vehicle. Probably for heavy omnibuses and large delivery wagons something of the description of steam or some vapor or probably petroleum engines will be used; but I think for a pleasure vehicle the electric carriage is the coming machine. MR. DURYEA:-This is a progressive age. One vehicle in particular that we can point to has gained its popularity by its speed more than anything else. That is the bicycle. People go out riding on bicycles for pleasure, and ride as far as 100 or even more miles in a day. So that a man who expects to get pleasure by driving only at the rate of 25 miles a day is certainly very slow in his requirements. We find that men pay high prices for fast horses. Why? Simply because they can drive a good distance in a little less time than the other fellow, or because they can drive further than other men. The same with motor vehicles. If we are going to build vehicles that people will be willing to pay for, they must be capable not only of high speed but of continued high speed. A vehicle that would not cover 25 miles in at least half a day I would not consider worth putting out as a motor vehicle, because I would not deem it greatly in advance of the horse. I myself have driven 50 or 60 miles even with a single horse, to a light buggy, in a day, without damaging the horse, and when a man has driven that distance over a rough country, he is usually anxious to finish the last part of the journey pretty quick. We have frequently finished 50 miles in an afternoon and had some time to spare, in motor vehicles on New England roads. The exhilaration of coasting down one of those hills at 20 or 25 miles an hour is second only to coasting it on a bicycle or coasting it in winter on a sled. And that is where the price for motor vehicles is to come in-the fact that we can have a great deal higher speed than with the horse. The reason why civilization is displacing the horse is because the horse is too slow. The reason why the horse displaced the ox, a few generations back, was because the ox was too slow. So if we are to build motor vehicles to take the place of the horse, they must be faster than the horse; and the fact that vehicle will travel 25 miles on a business trip is no proof that the motor must not do more. If it does more, the people will take it and pay more for it. That is the way the speed problem looks to me. In the matter of charging, we work a horse for half a day. If a vehicle will not stand half a day's work without charging again, then it is not properly equipped for capacity. The time of charging must not be confounded with the time of changing batteries. It is one thing to take them finally back to the starting point and be able to slip in another set of batteries. It is an entirely different thing to be half a day away from home and wish to be back, and the only thing available a Western Union telegraph wire or perhaps some private battery stored around somewhere. Those considerations have presented themselves to us whenever we have turned our attention towards electric wagons, and therefore we have preferred to use a vehicle which we could load up with ordinary stove gasoline, which could be had at most grocery or stove stores, or on a pinch run home on kerosene. We Our vehicles will go on kerosene if it is necessary to do so. think that is quite an advantage in favor of the gasoline vehicle. I have never used the naphtha launch itself; but I have used several varieties of launches having automatic steam engines, which, so far as I know, are just as reliable and just as automatic as an engine using some other liquid as a source of heat. SECRETARY POPE (in the Chair):-The question of delivering and transporting merchandise in our cities, is one of great importance, because we all know, or should know, that it is the most expensive part of the freight traffic to-day. When the Singer Sewing Machine Company moved their factory from New York City to Elizabeth, where they had means of direct shipment from the factory, loading machines directly on the cars, it was found that they could place them in Chicago, in bulk in the cars, for what it cost to put them on the wharf in New York ready for shipment, because they dispensed with boxing and the cost of cartage to the train, and we all know that the cost of cartage is of greater importance than the cost of freight, much as we growl about the latter. We are also approaching the question of individual passenger transportation. We find that what is wanted to-day in our cities, in order to give the best facilities for transportation, is to provide exclusive privileges for bicycles on certain streets, and storage for them where the people work or where they lodge. Then each individual may be independent, a large part of the year, of all other kinds of transportation; and consequently, his own ability to go, as Mr. Duryea has said, a hundred miles a day, would be certainly one of the satisfactions of owning a machine of that capacity, even if a person did not wish to use it to that extent. It is the ability to do a thing of that kind if it becomes necessary, that is satisfactory; not that you wish to go a hundred miles every day, but that you have a machine with which you can go a hundred, or a hundred and fifty miles if necessary. Therefore the machine ought to have that margin in order to meet the demands of the present day. We In regard to getting supplies of kerosene at every point-that is what we hope for in respect to electricity one of these daysthat its use will become so universal that wherever we may be, we may have electrical facilities, or current for charging storage batteries. One of the drawbacks to the use of electric heating and electric motors for a great many purposes, is the lack of opportunity for obtaining current in a great many cases. can see to-day, from the example that is being set at Niagara, and which now obtains at one or two points in the west, notably at Great Falls, Montana, how universal the application of electricity becomes when we have the facilities for obtaining it at every point in the city. This will be the case-how soon, of course, is visionary. But we all realize in metropolitan life how much depends upon the convenience of all these improvements that are being brought to our attention. [Adjourned.] AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS. NEW YORK, February 17th, 1897. The 113th meeting of the INSTITUTE was held this date at 12 West 31st Street, and was called to order by President Duncan at 8.20 P. M. The Secretary read the following names of associate members elected and transferred at the meeting of the Executive Committee in the afternoon : Name. BROWN, ALBERT W. DINKEY, ALVA C. Address. Assistant Manager of Telephone Supt. Electric Dept., Homestead FRANKENFIELD, BUDD Instructor in Electrical Engineering, The University of Wisconsin; residence, 640 State St., Madison, Wis. RIPLEY, WM. HOWE ROSA, EDWARD B. Student, in Dept. of Electrical Van Deventer, CHRISTOPHER Student, Columbia University; residence, 626 Lexington Ave., New York City. Endorsed by. Harris J. Ryan. Fred'k Bedell. Ernest Merritt. Edw. G. Waters. D. C. Jackson. Ralph W. Pope. H. A. Rowland. F. B. Crocker, WOODWORTH, GEO. K. Electrician, Crawford Mfg. Co., Harris J. Ryan. Hagerstown, Md. Edw. L. Nichols. Total 7. TRANSFERRED FROM ASSOCIATE TO FULL MEMBERSHIP. Approved by Board of Examiners, Dec. 29th, 1896. DAWSON, PHILIP. GIBBS, LUCIUS T. SPRAGUE, FRANK J. LESLIE, EDWARD ANDREW Total 4. Associate and Chief Engineer with R. W. Blackwell, Vice-President, Sprague Electric Elevator Co., 253- Vice-President and Manager, Manhattan Electric THE PRESIDENT:-The paper this evening, gentlemen, will be by Mr. Howell, entitled "The Conductivity of Incandescent Carbon Filaments, and of the Space Surrounding Them." Mr. Howell read the following paper: |