The Hellesen dry cell is like the “E.  C. C.,” but contains a hollow carbon, and is packed with sawdust in a millboard case.  The Leclanche-Barbier dry cell is a modification of the Leclanche wet cell, having a paste of sal-ammoniac instead of a solution.

All the foregoing cells are called “primary,” because they are generators of electricity.  There are, however, batteries known as “secondary,” which store the current as the Leyden jar stores up the discharge from an electrical machine.

In the action of a primary cell, as we have seen, water is split into its constituent gases, oxygen and hydrogen.  Moreover, it was discovered by Carlisle and Nicholson in the year 1800 that the current of a battery could decompose water in the outer part of the circuit.  Their experiment is usually performed by the. apparatus shown in figure 20, which is termed a voltameter, and consists of a glass vessel V, containing water acidulated with a little sulphuric acid to render it a better conductor, and two glass test-tubes Oh inverted over two platinum strips or electrodes, which rise up from the bottom of the vessel and are connected underneath it to wires from the positive and negative poles of the battery C Z. It will be understood that the current enters the water by the positive electrode, and leaves it by the negative electrode.

When the power of the battery is sufficient the water in the vessel is decomposed, and oxygen being the negative element, collects at the positive foil or electrode, which is covered by the tube O. The hydrogen, on the other hand, being positive, collects at the negative foil under the tube H. These facts can be proved by dipping a red-hot wick or taper into the gas of the tube O and seeing it blaze in presence of the oxygen which feeds the combustion, then dipping the lighted taper into the gas of the tube H and watching it burn with the blue flame of hydrogen.  The volume of gas at the cathode or negative electrode is always twice that at the anode or positive electrode, as it should be according to the known composition of water.

Now, if we disconnect the battery and join the two platinum electrodes of the voltameter by a wire, we shall find a current flowing out of the voltameter as though it were a battery, but in the reverse direction to the original current which decomposed the water.  This “secondary” or reacting current is evidently due to the polarisation of the foils—­that is to say, the electro-positive and electro-negative gases collected on them.

Professor Groves constructed a gas battery on this principle, the plates being of platinum and the two gases surrounding them oxygen and hydrogen, but the most useful development of it is the accumulator or storage battery.

The first practicable secondary battery of Gaston Plante was made of sheet lead plates or electrodes, kept apart by linen cloth soaked in dilute sulphuric acid, after the manner of Volta’s pile.  It was “charged” by connecting the plates to a primary battery, and peroxide of lead (PbO2) was formed on one plate and spongy lead (Pb) on the other.  When the charging current was cut off the peroxide plate became the positive and the spongy plate the negative pole of the secondary cell.