The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-23 00:00:00

THE ELECTRIC POWER tIORT.

In the odoriferous suburb of Wandsworth, about five
miles from the metropolis, between the river W:wdle
and the.Riehmond link of the South-Western RaillN'aY,
a creek of moderate dimensions skirts au osier bed, a ud
conducts vessel& of from 50 to 80 tons from the Thamt"
to the portals of a very compact little factory. Thit
factory you can look down upon from the embankment,
three minutes after leaving the Wandsworth eration,
ea route for Richmond. In the rear it is guarded by a
sentinel chimney, some 130 feet high, blowing its medi-
tative cloud on the very confines of the "no smoking
allowed here" districts comprised in Lord Palmerston's
bill.

This edifice is one of the most remarkable workshops
in the world, for here Electricity, the unseen and won-
drous agency that is yet to move the world and to out-
giant the giant steam, is the daily product ; and,. what
is equally remarkable, this daily product has for the last
three months (pending the necessary mechanical arrange-
ments for its practical application to the purposes of _life)
been actually thrown away, while a large commercial
profit has been realised to the manufacturers from tile
sale of the mere residuma—the refuse—produced in tho
batteries. _ _

For this residuum consists of pigments of all shades—
blue; given, yellow, and red, of greatest brilliancy,
now recognised by artistic and practical authorities as
equl to any produced by the ordinary technological
processes. With two months working, spite of the groat
preliminary outlays and expenses incident to new expc-
riments on a large scale, and the drawbacks and diffi-•
culties attending a private partnership engaged in a work
of national magnitude, the adventurers have realised a
profit out of actual sales of colours, at the rate of 15
per cent per annum, on the total capital
yet expended and
invested.
The boon has now been bestowed upon the world, as
thus tested and confirmed by experimental demonstra-
tion, of CHEAP ELECTRICITY, costless indeed to the manu-
facturers, for their profits are made were they to throw
the electricity into the atmosphere ; and it now remains for
Dr. Watson, to whose genius and indefatigable energies
we owe this triumph of practical science, to demonstrate
the national and public uses of this great power, as be
has already demonstrated to the fortunate shareholde.rs
the commercial value of the mere chemieal.basis. Butt
we must not say that it remains for him to do so—
for already preparations are made, in the first place,
to light up the largest railway station in the metropolis
—that of the Great Northern at King's Cross—Perm"'
ently with the electric light, ono lamp doing the work of
250 gas bus ners. Already arrangements are entered
into to extend its application to the conversion of iron
into steel, in one of the largest steel-converti.ng furnaces
in the north, at an almost incredible saving oc time and
,cost. In a few days an extensive °
bleaching licr.uid and
p owder manufactory will be in operation, in convection
w:th the works, producing by an electric current n ino-
cuous hyperchloride of soda, at a cost not exceeding that
of t.lie deleterious chloride of lime, at present mi*.ing
such inroads upon our linen, in the hands of unsorovnl-
ous wauherwomen ; and in a short time a commensurate
revolution will take place in locomotion by aid of the
same gre.st natural agent, first in economizing fuel by a
vast reduotion in the cost, and, a still greater improve-,
ment, in tlw effective value of the process of coking and'
of desulphux
ising coke ; and, by and by, in the actual
substitution ,f electricity for steam for all the purposes
for which steam has been heretofore employed.
Truly, as a contemporary wittily and wisely observes,
steam must gives way to electricity, and the genius .f
Watt must be superseded by that of this worthy son of
Watt—WATSON.