Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1895 — Nursery Electricity. [ARTICLE]

Nursery Electricity.

“Electricity is coming into such familiar use that it will soon find its way into the nursery,” said an electrician to a reporter recently. “It lias already got as far as the playroom. Your boy can buy a motor, with which he can run the machinery of a toy factory or any other sort of miniature mechanism. For a little more money he can get a motor and battery combined, but the ingenious youngster prefers, to make his own battery. All helms to do is to get a jar, two or three little plates of carbon and zinc and a small quantity of socalled ‘electropoiu’ solution. The solution is composed of bichromate of potash, sulphuric acid, bisulphate of mercury and water.” “The ingenious youngster aforesaid pours the solution into the jar, and in it he immerses his zinc and carbon plates, connecting these by a couple of wires with his little motor. The chemical action set up in the jar engenders enough electricity to run the motor. I don’t know of any more instructive toy for a boy, and it has the advantage of cheapness. The youth of the end of the centuary is much interested in the rudiments of electricity, and what is learned in the nursery is apt to lead to.jmportant inventions in this line when the young American of to-day is grown to adult age. “Many householders now purchase the simple apparatus for eleciric bells and burglar alarms, putting them in themselves. Of late the high school students have been doing a good deal of this sort of thing, the idea being suggested to them by the studies in electrics which they are pursuing. At the colored high school, as I dare say you know, lessons in electrical science are being given to the boys and girls, who are taught the rudiments in a w T ell-equipped laboratory. ” —Philadelphia Times.