researches he found that the greatest useful effect was produced when
dilute sulphuric acid was electrolyzed between electrodes of metallic
lead.

A set of Plante's original cells was exhibited for the first time in
March, 1860, before the Paris Academy of Sciences. Scientists admired
and praised it, but the general public knew nothing of this great
discovery thus brought to notice. Indeed, at that period little
commercial value could be attached to such apparatus, since the
accumulator had to be charged by means of primary batteries, and it
was then well known that electrical energy, when produced by chemical
means in voltaic cells, was far too expensive for any purpose outside
the physical laboratory or the telegraph office.

It was twenty years after this exhibition at the Academy of Sciences
in Paris that public attention was drawn to the importance of storage
batteries, and that Mr. Faure conceived the idea of constructing
plates consisting of lead and oxides of lead. At that time the
advantages accruing through a system of electrical storage could be
fully appreciated, since electrical energy was already being produced
by mechanical means through the medium of dynamo-electric machines.

It was the dynamo machine which created the demand for the storage
battery, and the latter was introduced anew to the public at large
and to the capitalist with great pomp and enthusiasm. One of Faure's
accumulators was sent to Sir William Thomson, and this eminent
scientist in the course of experiments ascertained that a single cell,
weighing 165 lb., can store two million foot-pounds of energy, or one
horse power for one hour, and that the loss of energy in charging did
not exceed 15 per cent. These results appeared highly encouraging.