Professor S. F. Thompson reports to the Times another ap-
plication of electricity as a motor. On Thursday, the Electrical Power Storage Company tried on the Thames a launch twenty- six feet in length, five feet in beam, and drawing two feet of water, with a twenty-two-inch screw-propeller driven solely by electricity, stored under the flooring. The force was contained in forty-five boxes, each of ten-inch cube, which, it was calculated, would last for four hours. The vessel was driven easily and silently against tide, at the rate of eight miles an hour. The boat was in all respects a complete success, and is the first ever launched on "a commercial scale," though M. Trouve ran a toy-boat two years ago on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing is said about expense, but a boat which can tracel at this speed without coal, and with no funnel, must for•dtany purposes be of almost immediate use. As the charging maalines can be put up anywhere, the practical problem of electricians must be to reduce the size and weight of the accumulators. Once small enough to be carried, they might drive a steamer across the Atlantic, being perpetually recharged by a dynamo driven by the motion itself.
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