The new
profession of electrical engineering called to its service great
numbers of able men. Manufacturers of electrical machinery
established research departments and employed inventors. The
times had indeed changed since the day when Morse, as a student
at Yale College, chose art instead of electricity as his calling,
because electricity afforded him no means of livelihood.
From Edison's plant in 1903 came a new type of the storage
battery, which he afterwards improved. The storage battery, as
every one knows, is used in the propulsion of electric vehicles
and boats, in the operation of block-signals, in the lighting of
trains, and in the ignition and starting of gasoline engines. As
an adjunct of the gas-driven automobile, it renders the starting
of the engine independent of muscle and so makes possible the
general use of the automobile by women as well as men.
The dynamo brought into service not only light and power but
heat; and the electric furnace in turn gave rise to several great
metallurgical and chemical industries. Elihu Thomson's process of
welding by means of the arc furnace found wide and varied
applications. The commercial production of aluminum is due to the
electric furnace and dates from 1886. It was in that year that H.
Y. Castner of New York and C.
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