From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Improvements in battery design, reliability, and lifespan, specifically regarding separators and acid gravity.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 58\3\ Scan178 | |
| Date | 1st February 1931 | |
| -2- EFC {E. Fowler Clarke - Electrical Engineer} 5/AD6.2.31 contd. are fitted in the rear of frame in which position we desire to minimise, as far as possible, the amount of topping up necessary. It also involves the use of higher specific gravity acid to avoid the discharged specific gravity being so low as to greatly increase the resistance of the battery. High specific gravity acid more quickly rots the separators and failure by short circuiting is therefore more likely. In these cheaper batteries there are no ebonite separators in addition to the wood separators as in the case of our own. The addition of this ebonite separator we found very necessary in our early experience of Exide batteries particularly when at all subject to over charging. After we have made the progress we have, in collaboration with the battery makers, in attaining to batteries which can certainly be considered as better for reliability and life than any others made, we feel that it would be a retrograde step to return to the more ordinary commercial article whose life, say about three years, is only about half the life of the batteries we at present use. EFC. {E. Fowler Clarke - Electrical Engineer} | ||