THEORY OF THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC ENGINE.
Several years ago a speculative American set the industrial world of Europe in excitement by this proposition. The Magneto-Electric Machines often made use of in the case of rheumatic disorders are well known. By imparting a swift rotation to the magnet of such a machine, we obtain powerful currents of electricity. If these be conducted through water, the latter will be reduced to its two components, oxygen and hydrogen. By the combustion of hydrogen water is again generated. If this combustion takes place, not in atmospheric air, in which oxygen only constitutes a fifth part, but in pure oxygen, and if a bit of chalk be placed in the flame, the chalk will be raised to a white heat, and give us the sun-like Drummond light: at the same time the flame develops a considerable quantity of heat. Now the American inventor proposed to utilise in this way the gases obtained from electrolytic decomposition; and asserted that by the combustion a sufficient amount of heat was generated to keep a small steam-engine in action, which again drove his magneto-electric machine, decomposed the water, and thus continually prepared its own fuel. This would certainly have been the most splendid of all discoveries,—a perpetual motion which, besides the force that kept it going, generated light like the sun, and warmed all around it. The affair, however, failed, as was predicted by those acquainted with the physical investigations which bear upon the subject.—Professor Helmholtz.