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).
Letter from an accumulator manufacturer discussing the supply and technical specifications of ebonite and celluloid batteries.
Identifier | ExFiles\Box 38\5\ Scan019 | |
Date | 15th March 1919 | |
X. 3398 Manufacturers of P. & R.{Sir Henry Royce} Accumulators. Established 1889. Victoria & Greville Works, Ashtead, Surrey THE NEW PETO & RADFORD ACCUMULATOR CO LTD Electrical Engineers 12 HEDDON STREET REGENT STREET LONDON W MANAGING DIRECTORS WILLIAM PETO M.I.E.E. G.R.N. MINCHIN M.A. TELEPHONE REGENT 2576 TELEGRAMS "CONCENTRATION REG. LONDON" REF M/C.153 15th March 1919. Ref. Your letter 14.March.1919 EFC4/T. Messrs. Rolls-Royce Ltd., Nightingale Road, DERBY. Dear Sirs, Re Lighting and Starting Battery. With regard to the ebonite battery, we have not yet received the boxes for these, but expect them now almost any day. With regard to a similar battery of about three quarters the ampere hour capacity, this could very easily be made up. The battery that you have at present has 4 positive plates and if we submit to you a similar one with 3 positive plates it will give you what you require. We happen to have in stock, one of these in celluloid and can despatch it to you per return if you wish. With regard to the Ebonite one, we can easily make one up of this smaller size, either instead of the larger one or in addition. We do not think that we have yet got the boxes for this smaller size but will enquire from our work on receipt of your reply. When we get your reply, the writer will make a special effort to get in a few of these boxes so that you can get the ebonite one, which you are so anxious to receive. With regard to using a smaller battery, it is fairly obvious to us that it will be quite alright for starting, the only question being whether it would run the lamps for sufficient time if for any reason the dynamo was not working. With regard to changing the acid, this is not so important in an ebonite one as in a celluloid, but nevertheless it certainly should be done as ebonite has its own impurities. With regard to the point on page 7 in our booklet, this was only meant as an extreme remedy for a man who perhaps was in the depths of the country and was in a difficulty about the point as it was the only way we could think of in being able to get out of the difficulty in a simple manner. We do not suppose that it would be used more than once in the history of a car, and then only in the case of one owner in a thousand, but still to give the man the information he might want we had to put it in as a suggestion. Another way out of the difficulty would be to make the Positive terminal larger than the negative so that they would not fit and were interchangeable. Yours faithfully, THE NEW PETO & RADFORD ACCUMULATOR CO. LTD G.R.N. Minchin [STAMP: REC'D 17 MAR 1919] | ||