Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 96: Chapter 89: Generator and Motor

“It’s alright, Mr. Graham. I ordered it. Your experiments are more important.” Carlo nodded with a smile, indifferent to these formalities.

“I’ve heard both generators have been successfully built?” Carlo glanced into the laboratory with curiosity, searching for the generators.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Graham hastily explained. “We have manufactured both direct current and alternating current generators and are currently exploring the uses of electricity.

Your Majesty, look, these are the two generators we use for experiments, and they can currently generate power after testing.”

Carlo looked at the two small detection devices, not with disdain but with curiosity and satisfaction: “Is there currently any equipment that can store electricity?”

“We have lead-acid batteries, Your Majesty,” Graham continued to introduce: “Currently, we use these batteries to store electrical energy, ensuring we have a certain amount of power available for experiments even when the generators are not working.”

Lead-acid batteries were born in 1859, invented by French physicist Gaston Planté. Since this is related to electricity, and Graham and others have worked for France’s electric company before, it was natural for them to encounter lead-acid batteries.

After all, it is currently the only rechargeable storage battery in the world, much more advanced than earlier voltaic piles and Daniel cells, and more suited for the various studies of the Electricity Laboratory.

“What stage are we at now? Are there any current difficulties?” Carlo immediately asked.

Although Carlo’s knowledge of electricity wasn’t abundant, if placed more than a hundred and fifty years ago in 1870, the little knowledge he had was still quite useful.

A tungsten filament light bulb alone was enough to allow Spain to avoid several years of detours concerning lighting, especially considering that current light bulb research leaned towards carbon filament bulbs.

As electricity slowly began to develop, there would later be the conflict between Edison and Tesla regarding direct and alternating current.

Actually, both direct current and alternating current have their pros and cons and are applied in different scenarios. Even in later generations, though most daily life uses alternating current, direct current also sees significant applications in industry.

Regrettably, Tesla is still too young right now, or else Carlo definitely has plans to bring Tesla to Spain to engage in electrical work.

It’s just right to give Tesla a few years of growth, without overly interfering with his talent development. When Tesla seeks work as an adult in the future, Carlo can send someone to bring him to Spain.

Tesla’s abilities are truly remarkable. He achieved around 1000 invention patents in his lifetime, spanning fields including alternating current, radio, wireless power transmission, ball lightning, turbines, magnifying transmitters, particle beam weapons, solar engines, X-ray devices, electric meters, missile science remote sensing technology, aircraft, cosmic rays, radar systems, and robotics, seemingly in all directions.

For ordinary scientists, specializing in any one of these would already require most of their energy, and some luck might be needed to discover notable research results.

But for Tesla, he contributed to nearly all these fields, and in some fields, he made outstanding contributions, which is exceedingly rare.

It’s just that later, due to becoming somewhat obsessed in scientific research, he earned the title of a mad scientist. And because he gave up the alternating current patent, he continued to live in poverty, becoming one of the famous figures with outstanding scientific contributions but also penniless and miserable life.

If Tesla had not given up the alternating current patents, on average, generating one horsepower of alternating current would require paying him approximately 2.5 US Dollar in patentfees.

This would be an extremely exaggerated income, but for someone of Tesla’s rather ordinary status, whether he could actually receive this patent fee would be an issue.

“Currently, we have conducted experiments in generating and storing electricity, but concerning the application of electrical energy, there are still quite a few problems,” Graham reported honestly.

While reporting, Graham’s expression showed slight embarrassment, evidently a bit frustrated by Carlo’s strong support yet his lack of significant research achievements.

“Speaking of which, I also have some thoughts about the application of electrical energy,” Carlo said with a smile. “Mr. Graham, have you considered reversing the principle of the generator?”

Graham was stunned for a moment, clearly frozen, but his mouth continued: “Your Majesty, you mean?”

Carlo nodded, smiling as he explained: “Since it is possible to generate electricity through kinetic energy, why not try generating kinetic energy through electricity?

Generators can generate electricity; why can’t they use electricity in reverse? I think this is a great idea, Mr. Graham, why not give it a try?”

Graham nodded slowly, but suddenly realized, showing an extremely excited smile while looking gratefully at Carlo: “My God! What a wonderful concept, why didn’t I think of it?

Your Majesty, you are truly a genius! If you were engaged in electrical work, those electrical scientists would have nothing to eat long ago.”

Carlo shook his head with a smile: “It’s just a sudden thought of mine. Whether it can work or not depends on the specific experiments.”

Conducting related experiments is quite simple.

Graham had two DC generators brought in to begin testing generators and motors.

The test principle is also very simple. A generator inherently generates electricity, but if the power generated by the first generator is transmitted to the second generator, what magical thing will happen?

Under the eyes of the onlookers, Graham started connecting the wires for the two generators.

After connecting all the wires and carefully inspecting them, Graham commanded his subordinate: “Start the first generator!”

With the countdown, the first generator officially started.

“Electricity has been generated!” The currents flowed through the test circuit, and the experiment staff smoothly detected the generation of electricity.

Upon hearing that electricity had been generated, everyone quickly turned their eyes to the second generator.

As the current entered the armature coil of the second generator, this generator quickly started running.

“God, it’s real, it’s unbelievable!” Lam looked at the two simultaneously running generators with a face of awe, even tears welled up at the corner of his eyes.

The other experimenters were not in much better condition; they did not expect the application of electrical energy to be realized by Carlo’s magical idea.

“Your Majesty, I have a great idea, please wait for a few minutes.” Graham, who discovered the motor, could hardly contain his excitement and requested from Carlo.

Carlo nodded, quietly waiting for Graham to realize his idea.

The device that Graham intended to manufacture was actually quite simple, at least the principle Carlo could understand.

It’s a small waterfall apparatus, with a reservoir both above and below the waterfall. After the upper reservoir releases water, it lets the hydropower engine generate electricity.

And the electricity is transmitted to the motor below, whose operation can pump the water from the lower reservoir back to the upper reservoir.

Of course, this is merely a demonstration of the application of electrical energy, it is not a perfect perpetual motion setup. Such a device isn’t perpetual motion; electricity incurs additional consumption during generation and use, Graham’s purpose for building this device is to more clearly demonstrate the function of the generator and motor.

This novel device immediately drew admiration from everyone in the laboratory, even Carlo was quite amazed.

This also showcases the mindset and hands-on ability of scientists from this era. Just after discovering the motor, they could create corresponding simulated use scenarios; Carlo was even more intrigued by the potential explosive leaps for the electricity industry moving forward.