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to the fact that combustion is greater on it than on the negative, and also to the fact that the carbonaceous particles carried along by the current to the positive pole are deposited in part upon the other pole. Supposing that these polarities of the carbons were being constantly alternately reversed, the effects might be symmetrical from all quarters, although the only current traversing the break were of the same direction; for, admitting that the reverse currents could not traverse the break, they would exist none the less for all that, and they might give rise (as has been demonstrated by Mr. Gaugain with regard to the discharges of the induction spark intercepted by the insulating plate of a condenser) to return discharges through the generator, which would then have, in the metallic part of the circuit, the same direction as the direct currents succeeding, although they had momentarily brought about opposite polarities in the electrodes. What might make us suppose such an interpretation of the phenomenon to have its _raison d'etre_, is that with the induced currents of the Ruhmkorff coil, it is not the positive pole that is the hottest, but rather the negative; from whence we might draw the deduction that it is not so much the direction of the current that determines the calorific effect in the electrodes, as the conditions of such current with respect to the generator. I should not be surprised, then, if, in the arc formed by the alternating currents of magneto-electric machines, there should pass only one current of the same direction, and which would be the one formed by the superposition of direct currents, and if the reverse currents should cause return discharges in the midst of the generating bobbins at the moment the direct currents were generated.--_Th. Du Moncel_.
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VOLCKMAR'S SECONDARY BATTERIES.
The inventive genius of the country is now directed to these important accessories of electric enterprise, and no wonder, for as far as can at present be seen, the secret of e
Scientific American Supplement, No. 344 (Aug 5, 1882), page 92
by Various