THE PROBLEM OF THE DIRECT CONVERSION OF CHEMICAL ENERGY INTO ELECTRICAL ENERGY

摘要

The problem of the direct conversion of chemical energy into electrical energy, which occupies an important place amid modern scientific problems, is in itself not new. Chemical sources of current (galvanic cells and storage batteries) have been known for a long time. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century galvanic cells were the only practical sources of electrical energy;they were widely used in laboratory practice and for powering various electrical devices. It is sufficient to remember that the famous laws of the theory of electricity formulated in the first half of the nineteenth century (the laws of Ohm, Kirchhoff, Faraday and others) were discovered as a result of laboratory experiments carried out with the aid of chemical sources of current. These same sources of current powered the first wire telegraph of P. A. Schilling (1832), the electric motor of the power boat of B. S. Jacobi (1838) and many other electrical devices (Ref. l).