Bacon, Francis Thomas

British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon demonstrates the first practical fuel cell. 

Fuel cells did not boom again for more than 50 years, although there was occasional activity in Europe. Then another person appeared on the scene, a man in the same vein as Sir William Grove, but much, much more persistent. This was Francis Thomas Bacon, and since it was he who stood directly behind NASA s use of fuel cells in the space flights, it can truly be said that more than any other individual, it was... 

Francis Thomas Bacon was a direct descendant of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Among others he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society (1973), and awarded the first Grove Medal (1991) [ii]. 

Wikipedia (2012) Francis Thomas Bacon, http //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Francis Thomas Bacon (last accessed 2 February 2012). 

In electrochemical studies, solutions of snUhric acid are generally used in different concentrations as an acid electrolyte. Throughout the history of fuel cell development, however, very few attempts were made to build a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell with sulfuric acid solution as an electrolyte. First models of operative fuel cells used alkaUne electrolytes. This development and its very successful practical demonstration in 1960 are associated with Francis Thomas Bacon. 

Initially, it was called Bacon cell, by virtue of its inventor Francis Thomas Bacon. It operates at low temperature around 100 °C and it is able to achieve 60-70% efficiency. It uses an aqueous solution of potassium hydroxide (KOH) as electrolyte solution. This fuel cell has quidc startup speed, one of its great advantages. The main disadvantage is that it is very sensitive to CO2 (Farooque Maru, 2001). It needs an external system to remove CO2 from the air. Furthermore, the use of a liquid electrolyte is also a disadvantage because it reduces the cell lifetime and makes the assembly handling and transport more difficult. 

From Essays, Civil and Moral, and The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon Areopagitica and Tractate on Education, by John Milton Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne. New York, Collier [cl909] Harvard Classics v. 4. 

Thomas Camnanella s City of the Sun Francis Bacon s New Atlantis... 

The literature on the Overbury poisoning is enormous. For records of contemporary accounts, for example, see Andrew Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning The Trial of the Earl of Somerset for the Poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower of London (London Richard Bentley, 1846), and Francis Bacon, A True and Historical Relation of the Poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (London, 1651). For a recent scholarly analysis, see David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard Fact and Fiction in the Court of King James (London Routledge, 1993). 

Francis Bacon wrote He therein observed how adultery is most often the begetter of that sin [poisoning] see A True and Historical Relation of the Poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (London, 1651), 15. 

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