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Story time. Dad worked briefly for the Eveready battery division of Union Carbide, and they had a plant in low-labor-cost (for the time) Asheboro North Carolina
by chiph 10y ago
Story time. Dad worked briefly for the Eveready battery division of Union Carbide, and they had a plant in low-labor-cost (for the time) Asheboro North Carolina. They had a problem with their then-new alkaline battery line where the batteries were exploding, and dad (a chemical engineer) was sent to find out why and fix it. He was there for several weeks looking over the process and line, trying various things to solve the problem.
Eventually his boss came for a visit and dad was explaining what he had done as they walked through the factory floor. Just as they passed a stack of batteries, one of them exploded -- which then set off a chain reaction as the released electrolyte shorted out adjacent batteries. Listening to this series of small explosions, his boss accused him of a setup. Nope. Just coincidence.
I think he said the problem was traced to the water supply and how the city had been varying the amount of chlorine in it.
The most interesting battery they made was for the Union Pacific Railroad. They had signal lights to run out in the middle of nowhere, and they had to run unattended through the Rocky Mountain winters. So they made this massive battery that would be hoisted by crane into a buried vault by the side of the tracks, to be swapped out 5-6 months later.
- colejohnson66 10y agoWouldn't signal lights require a network to coordinate? That would mean there's some kind of connection to it, so why would it need a battery?
- foota 10y agoI believe trains would flip switches as they rode along the rail.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chiph 10y agoMore than likely it used Automatic Block Signaling, invented in the late 19th century. Train detection is done by looking for the electrical leakage across the rails through the steel wheels & axles of the train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_block_signaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_block_signaling It can't handle as many trains as centralized control, but it has the advantage of not needing a network in remote areas - just buried wires. It's the equivalent to relay logic. (I finally get to put some of my teenage model railroading knowledge to work)
- robbiemitchell 10y agoThis is the same signaling used by most of the NYC subway system and (if I understand correctly) is the reason they can't simply add more trains to the tracks despite the current overcrowding at times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_of_the_New_York_City_Subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_of_the_New_York_City...