History
The mercury arc rectifier was invented by Peter Cooper Hewitt in 1902 and further developed throughout the 1920s and 1930s by researchers in both Europe and North America. Before the advent of solid-state devices, mercury-arc rectifiers were one of the most efficient rectifiers. Mercury-arc rectifiers or "converters" were used for charging storage batteries and in arc lighting systems where they were found to be more efficient than rotary converters.
Read more about this topic: Mercury-arc Valve
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“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
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—D.H. (David Herbert)