Camille Alphonse Faure (21 May 1840 – 14 September 1898) was a French chemical engineer who in 1881 significantly improved the design of the
lead-acid battery, which had been invented by
Gaston Planté
Gaston Planté (22 April 1834 – 21 May 1889) was a French physicist who invented the lead–acid battery in 1859. This type battery was developed as the first rechargeable electric battery marketed for commercial use and it is widely used in aut ...
in 1859. Faure's improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale. The patents were assigned to the
Société La Force et la Lumière. The right to use these patents in the
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...
were sold to the
Faure Electric Accumulator Company on 29 March 1881. Faure was a consultant engineer with
William Edward Ayrton
William Edward Ayrton, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (14 September 18478 November 1908) was an English physicist and electrical engineer.
Life
Early life and education
Ayrton was born in London, the son of Edward Nugent Ayrton, a barrister, ...
for this company.
Biography
He was born at
Vizille
Vizille (; frp, Veselye) is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France.
Population
Sights
Vizille is the home of the Musée de la Révolution française, a rich depository of archival and rare materials devoted to the French ...
and trained at the
Ecole des Arts et Métiers at Aix. From 1874 until about 1880, he worked as a chemist at the new factory of the
Cotton Powder Company at
Uplees
Uplees is a remote hamlet north of Faversham, Kent in southeast England. It was a key part of the Faversham explosives industry during World War I, with the Cotton Powder Company importing raw materials via the deepwater channel of the Swale, and ...
,
Faversham
Faversham is a market town in Kent, England, from London and from Canterbury, next to the Swale, a strip of sea separating mainland Kent from the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary. It is close to the A2, which follows an ancient British t ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, England. While there, he and the factory manager, George Trench, took out patents for
Tonite (a new high explosive) (1874), and an improved dynamite detonator (1878).
In 1880, Faure patented a method of coating
lead
Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...
plates with a paste of lead oxides,
sulphuric acid
Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid ( Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular formu ...
and
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...
, which was then cured by gentle warming in a humid atmosphere. The curing process caused the paste to change to a mixture of
lead sulphate
Lead(II) sulfate (PbSO4) is a white solid, which appears white in microcrystalline form. It is also known as ''fast white'', ''milk white'', ''sulfuric acid lead salt'' or ''anglesite''.
It is often seen in the plates/electrodes of car batteries, ...
s which adhered to the lead plate. During charging the cured paste was converted into electrochemically active material (the "active mass") and gave a substantial increase in capacity compared with Planté's battery. This was a significant breakthrough that led to the industrial manufacture of lead-acid batteries, as now used for starting motor cars.
Towards the end of his life Faure was granted further patents,
[Swiss Patent Nos 3698 (1891) and 3855 (1891) and UK Patent Nos 15152 (1894), 11341 (1896), 11342 (1896), and 21587 (1896)] among them ones for the manufacture of aluminium alloys and improvements to hot air engines and motor vehicle steering mechanisms.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Faure, Camille Alphonse
1840 births
1898 deaths
People from Isère
19th-century French inventors
19th-century French chemists
Electrochemistry
Battery inventors