🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Edison battery question

[Stuperduke]

Well, thrift store score was great picked up what I know are edison batteries, not only because they say it but because of what they are. My question is that I did not believe he made batteries before 1900. Any information on an 1890 Edison brand type Bb would be fantastic. Not looking for worth, just the history. You can still read the edison brand on the electrodes perfectly so they must not have been used much.

 

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[hollARDog]

Well, thrift store score was great picked up what I know are edison batteries, not only because they say it but because of what they are. My question is that I did not believe he made batteries before 1900. Any information on an 1890 Edison brand type Bb would be fantastic. Not looking for worth, just the history. You can still read the edison brand on the electrodes perfectly so they must not have been used much.

Thats a really cool find💪

 

[Red-Coat]

Good find in that condition.

The Edison Manufacturing Company was organized in December 1889 as his personal business for the purpose of making and selling the Edison-Lalande primary battery. Edison was granted the patent for a “Voltaic Battery” on 17th June 1890 (but very early batteries may have the words “Patent Pending”) with a 17 year protection. You will find that date reference on later batteries too which rely on the same technology. It’s not necessarily the date of manufacture.

Edison’s catalogue of c.1916 has no listing for a Type BB, so it would seem to have been phased out by then. As I understand it, the Type BB was aimed at industrial applications and particularly the railroad industry, but doubtless saw other uses too.

 

[Stuperduke]

Good find in that condition.

The Edison Manufacturing Company was organized in December 1889 as his personal business for the purpose of making and selling the Edison-Lalande primary battery. Edison was granted the patent for a “Voltaic Battery” on 17th June 1890 (but very early batteries may have the words “Patent Pending”) with a 17 year protection. You will find that date reference on later batteries too which rely on the same technology. It’s not necessarily the date of manufacture.

Edison’s catalogue of c.1916 has no listing for a Type BB, so it would seem to have been phased out by then. As I understand it, the Type BB was aimed at industrial applications and particularly the railroad industry, but doubtless saw other uses too.

Thank you so much, that's pretty much what I was looking for. The plates still read the name perfectly and look as if they have been hardly used. Nearly no degradation of anything inside. I attached a photo to this reply. Pretty remarkable in my book.

 

[Stuperduke]

Thank you so much, that's pretty much what I was looking for. The plates still read the name perfectly and look as if they have been hardly used. Nearly no degradation of anything inside. I attached a photo to this reply. Pretty remarkable in my book.

It has other patents pending but not specifically patent pending before that date. It reads patented on the 1890 date and after it says other patents pending. What would this have been used for on a train? Furthermore, was there a bank of them? I can't imagine a bank of these guys filled with acid sloshing away!

 

[Tesorodeoro]

The railroad used batteries in their operation. A perfect example would be the engineer’s watch. How do you think they kept the trains on time? Wind up watch set to what standard? Accurate time was a commodity long before 1900

 

[Tpmetal]

The railroad used batteries in their operation. A perfect example would be the engineer’s watch. How do you think they kept the trains on time? Wind up watch set to what standard? Accurate time was a commodity long before 1900

I know what your saying now but it confused me at first. yes there were "electric clocks" since the 1840s. at first I thought your meant electric watch, which didn't come around until like the 1950s. but yeah rather interesting stuff if you look into the history of standardizing time around railroads.

 

[Red-Coat]

It has other patents pending but not specifically patent pending before that date. It reads patented on the 1890 date and after it says other patents pending. What would this have been used for on a train? Furthermore, was there a bank of them? I can't imagine a bank of these guys filled with acid sloshing away!

The railroad used batteries in their operation. A perfect example would be the engineer’s watch. How do you think they kept the trains on time? Wind up watch set to what standard? Accurate time was a commodity long before 1900

All kinds of other uses too, and not just confined to the trains themselves. Electricity was needed for signalling illumination, passenger illumination, safety lights, status indication, telegraphy equipment and such. Not every railroad outpost was connected to an electric grid and, even if it was, batteries were used as a backup in the event of power failure. Some lighting equipment also needed to be portable, so batteries provided the ideal solution.

Early trains didn’t run at night but the need to do so soon became apparent. Passenger illumination was initially provided by dim kerosene lamps and then by gas lighting, with cylinders of gas being slung below the frame of the rolling stock. After some terrible fires, electric lighting was introduced. First use of a dynamo was in 1885 in Germany, but it was used to charge accumulator batteries so that there was continuous illumination when the train was stopped. In fact, power was lost when the speed of the train dropped below 18mph and the batteries then took over. For most of the steam age and into the diesel era, the electricity for car lighting and ventilation was derived from batteries charged by axle-driven generators on each car, or from engine-generator sets mounted under the car body.

When trains began to run at night there was much debate in the US about whether they needed headlights. Initially, some operators had lanterns slung on the front of the locomotive but by the start of the Civil War, most locomotives had a proper headlight fuelled by oil or kerosene. The first battery-operated light was tested in Russia in 1874 but mass production in America didn’t begin until 1897. In 1915, the US Congress mandated that every train be equipped with an electric headlight

 

[dougachim]

Well, thrift store score was great picked up what I know are edison batteries, not only because they say it but because of what they are. My question is that I did not believe he made batteries before 1900. Any information on an 1890 Edison brand type Bb would be fantastic. Not looking for worth, just the history. You can still read the edison brand on the electrodes perfectly so they must not have been used much.

I have parts of Edison batteries from the old RailRoad between El Paso Texas and Columbus New Mexico

 

[tamrock]

Cool little find and wonderful info to read this morning.

 

[Red-Coat]

The railroad used batteries in their operation. A perfect example would be the engineer’s watch. How do you think they kept the trains on time? Wind up watch set to what standard? Accurate time was a commodity long before 1900

In the 1890s Webb C. Ball was commissioned by railroad officials to create an overarching set of standards for “Railroad Grade” watches (wind-up pocket watches). Before that, different railroad companies had a variety of requirements for a watch to be regarded as suitable for use by their conductors, engineers and other staff.

Typical standards for “Railroad Grade” included things like non-magnetic parts that were unaffected by electric fields, temperature compensation, settings for different orientations of the watch, improved shock resistance, protection against accidental resetting if the winding knob was knocked or snagged, service intervals and such.

Ball’s standard was soon adopted by all railroad companies.

 

[Stuperduke]

Well thank you all for the great information and fun reading. Yeah, could be watch, radio, possibly boiler ignition. Really difficult to find much on the BB type specially, too bad we can't ask him. I am still stunned you can perfectly see the name on the electrodes, they must not have been used hardly at all. I don't see them in his 1910 catalog so maybe they are earlier?

 

[Timbermaster]

Neat find for sure. I personally have never seen one.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

In the 1890s Webb C. Ball was commissioned by railroad officials to create an overarching set of standards for “Railroad Grade” watches (wind-up pocket watches). Before that, different railroad companies had a variety of requirements for a watch to be regarded as suitable for use by their conductors, engineers and other staff.

View attachment 2037771

Typical standards for “Railroad Grade” included things like non-magnetic parts that were unaffected by electric fields, temperature compensation, settings for different orientations of the watch, improved shock resistance, protection against accidental resetting if the winding knob was knocked or snagged, service intervals and such.

Ball’s standard was soon adopted by all railroad companies.

Yes and with the introduction of the telegraph, accurate time was easily obtained. Electric clocks arrived with the telegraph line.

 

[Red-Coat]

Yes and with the introduction of the telegraph, accurate time was easily obtained. Electric clocks arrived with the telegraph line.

This is now a bit of a digression, but that’s not really how things panned out. There was no real problem in producing accurate timepieces for use by railroads without the use of electricity – battery or otherwise (as per the circular I showed in post #11). The problem (solved principally by the telegraph, which of course needed electricity) was synchronisation.

In the early days of railroad operation, companies had to cope with the fact that - because time was regulated according to the rising and setting of the sun – “local time” varied according to geography. For example, when the British GWR ran its first service from London to Bridgewater in June 1841, the published timetable carried the following warning:

LONDON TIME is kept at all the Stations on the Railway, which is about 4 minutes earlier than READING time; 5½ minutes before STEVENTON time; 7½ minutes before CIRENCESTER time; 8 minutes before CHIPPENHAM time; 11 minutes before BATH and BRISTOL time; and 14 minutes before BRIDGEWATER time.

The line was 156 miles long, so “local time” (solar time) for the daily lives of citizens varied by a few minutes all the way along the line. Anyone not taking this into account and relying on the local time displayed on their own watch risked missing the train.

Before the railways became established, it didn't matter that places at different longitudes kept their local time by the Sun since there was no means of transport faster than a horse. A few minutes discrepancy either way was of no consequence. The railway network allowing people to travel long distances in short times however needed a standardised time for scheduling purposes and to avoid collisions. It was the electric telegraph network that provided the solution. Not that the clocks used by railways needed to be electrically powered (although limited numbers of electric clocks did exist), but that the signals sent almost instantaneously via the telegraph enabled mechanical timepieces to be manually adjusted to maintain the synchronicity at all locations. Systems that enabled automatic synchronisation by telegraph signals (which did require the clocks to be electrically powered) eventually followed at a much later date.

In Britain “Greenwich Mean Time” (GMT) was adopted in 1847 as “Railway Time” for synchronisation purposes by the Railway Clearing House. By 1848 almost all railway companies adjusted their clocks and timetables accordingly. Then in 1852 a facility was set up at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich that transmitted accurate time signals throughout the country over the electric telegraph network. By 1855 nearly all public authorities, such as churches and town halls, set their clocks to 'Railway Time', displayed on station clocks by station masters who adjusted them according to the signals from Greenwich.

The adoption of standardisation elsewhere was a slow process that had implications beyond the railway network and was resisted in many places. Railways in the US and Canada didn’t coordinate their clocks until 1883, with some cities (Detroit for example) refusing to align public clocks to ‘Railway Time’. Then in 1884 at an International Telegraph Union conference in Washington DC, Britain convinced the other participants to adopt Greenwich as the prime meridian for measuring longitude and timekeeping. It took decades for full implementation. Uniform agreement wasn’t established in the US until 1918, when the ‘Standard Time Act’ entered the statute books.

 

[Stuperduke]

The amount on knowledge on here is so great. Such a great conversation stemming from a simple question.

 

[Tony in SC]

Several years ago I was lucky enough to be on a crew that was invited to the Biltmore House in Asheville NC to start the old engine that sits in the basement. The engine ran a generator that charged the bank of batteries that powered the lighting system for the house. In the battery room there must have been 100 or so glass batteries. The mission was a failure. As soon as the engine started the mansion started to fill with black smoke! The exhaust which ran underground to the outside was broken and filled roots!!!

 

[Tesorodeoro]

T

This is now a bit of a digression, but that’s not really how things panned out. There was no real problem in producing accurate timepieces for use by railroads without the use of electricity – battery or otherwise (as per the circular I showed in post #11). The problem (solved principally by the telegraph, which of course needed electricity) was synchronisation.

In the early days of railroad operation, companies had to cope with the fact that - because time was regulated according to the rising and setting of the sun – “local time” varied according to geography. For example, when the British GWR ran its first service from London to Bridgewater in June 1841, the published timetable carried the following warning:

LONDON TIME is kept at all the Stations on the Railway, which is about 4 minutes earlier than READING time; 5½ minutes before STEVENTON time; 7½ minutes before CIRENCESTER time; 8 minutes before CHIPPENHAM time; 11 minutes before BATH and BRISTOL time; and 14 minutes before BRIDGEWATER time.

The line was 156 miles long, so “local time” (solar time) for the daily lives of citizens varied by a few minutes all the way along the line. Anyone not taking this into account and relying on the local time displayed on their own watch risked missing the train.

Before the railways became established, it didn't matter that places at different longitudes kept their local time by the Sun since there was no means of transport faster than a horse. A few minutes discrepancy either way was of no consequence. The railway network allowing people to travel long distances in short times however needed a standardised time for scheduling purposes and to avoid collisions. It was the electric telegraph network that provided the solution. Not that the clocks used by railways needed to be electrically powered (although limited numbers of electric clocks did exist), but that the signals sent almost instantaneously via the telegraph enabled mechanical timepieces to be manually adjusted to maintain the synchronicity at all locations. Systems that enabled automatic synchronisation by telegraph signals (which did require the clocks to be electrically powered) eventually followed at a much later date.

In Britain “Greenwich Mean Time” (GMT) was adopted in 1847 as “Railway Time” for synchronisation purposes by the Railway Clearing House. By 1848 almost all railway companies adjusted their clocks and timetables accordingly. Then in 1852 a facility was set up at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich that transmitted accurate time signals throughout the country over the electric telegraph network. By 1855 nearly all public authorities, such as churches and town halls, set their clocks to 'Railway Time', displayed on station clocks by station masters who adjusted them according to the signals from Greenwich.

The adoption of standardisation elsewhere was a slow process that had implications beyond the railway network and was resisted in many places. Railways in the US and Canada didn’t coordinate their clocks until 1883, with some cities (Detroit for example) refusing to align public clocks to ‘Railway Time’. Then in 1884 at an International Telegraph Union conference in Washington DC, Britain convinced the other participants to adopt Greenwich as the prime meridian for measuring longitude and timekeeping. It took decades for full implementation. Uniform agreement wasn’t established in the US until 1918, when the ‘Standard Time Act’ entered the statute books.

Thank you for taking the time to write that. Clearly railroad history is your hobby (maybe job?).

 

[Red-Coat]

Thank you for taking the time to write that. Clearly railroad history is your hobby (maybe job?).

You're welcome. Hobby rather than job, although my brother is the real railway enthusiast and his son (my nephew) is the tram enthusiast of the family. They're both absolute founts of knowledge.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

You're welcome. Hobby rather than job, although my brother is the real railway enthusiast and his son (my nephew) is the tram enthusiast of the family. They're both absolute founts of knowledge.

Well if you didn’t cut and paste that from someone else, your quite the fountain of information yourself. Regardless it was impressively useful.