The Industrial Applications of Electro-Chemistry

Abstract

THAT electricity is able to bring about chemical change appears to have been observed for the first time about the middle of last century. With Volta's discovery of the principle of his pile, in 1792, it became possible to set larger quantities of electricity in motion, and in 1800, the year in which Volta described his first large battery, the study of the chemical effects of the electric current may be said to have commenced with the observations of Nicholson and Carlisle on the electrolysis of water. They were the first to notice the separate evolution of the products of the decomposition at opposite poles; so that our knowledge of electrolysis, upon which the majority of the applications of electro-chemistry depend, may be said to have been acquired in the nineteenth century.