Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1879-01-30
ELECTRIC LIGHT UNDER GROUND.
Experimental Illumination of the Rolbor1
Vi0dMct.
@LondOn News. Dec. 1877


[London News, Dec. 1877
On Saturday night a trial of electric light
on the Jablochkoff system took place on the
Holborn viaduct, at the request Of the COM
missioners of sewers for the city of London.
The experiment was made in the presence of
Mr.. William Bassingham, chairman of the
streets commission Mr.. Richard Cox, chair
man of the sewers commission Col. Hay
| wood, city engineer; Messrs. Shutter, Wal
lace, Blanch, Rudkin and many other men,
bers of the sewers commission and the street
and market committees. For some time
past Mr.. j. A. Berry, the engineer of the
Societe Generate d'Electricite, has
been making preparations for apply
ing the Jablechkoff system of
electric illumination to the Holborn viaduct.
His efforts were much facilitated by the Pc
culiar construction of the viaduct itself,
erected in 1869 from the designs OF Col.
Haywood. The majority of those who roll
over it, and forget that there was once
place called Holborn Hill, have no idea of
the complex nature of its substructure, con-
sisting of several series of large vaults, sew
ers and subways, and the various shafts nec-
essary for their efficient ventilation. Through
the subways run gas, water and telegraph
pipes, the effect of this arrangement being
that alterations in the gas and water supply
can be made at any time without disturbing
| the roadway, the ground having been thus
wisely prepared for any further alteration or
improvement. Mr.. Berry had no great diff
fculty in conducting the connecting wires
from the hut under the viaduct to
the lamp posts above. From the
Gramme duplex machine, driven by twenty
horse-p power Robey's engine, the wires are
carried along the subways and upward
through the shafts leading to the lamp
! columne, and thus to the "candles'' con-
| tanned in the now we'll known globes. As
the Jablochkoff candle burns no longer than
an hour and half, it is necessary, as has
! already been explained in the Daily Neus,
to renew the fuel of the lamp within that in
terval by means of the so-called ''commuta-
tori which defects the current from the
extinct candle to fresh one already set up
within the opalescent globe, which contains,
in the present state of the invention, four CT
such candles. These "commutators" are
judiciousy placed in the base of
the lamp-posts on Holborn viaduct.
The trial on Saturday night was
| very good one Sixteen lamps, placed on
each alternate lamp post between Holborn
circus and Newgate street, were lighted "a
about $50 o'clock, to the great enjoyment
of the numerous spectators az each success
sive circuit of four lamps shone out of the
surrounding gloom. So far as could be
judged, the gas burning In the alternate
lamps on the viaduct was entireless useless,
its yellow rays being completely outshone by
it's brilliant rival. On no previous occasion
in this country. save that of the preceding
night on the Thames enkankment, has the
Ja5lochkof candle burned 80 steadily as an
Saturday. There was some little Pickering
and unsteadiness for the first quarter of an
hour, but afterwsrd the light was almost as
steady as it was intense. The quality of
light thrown down into Harrington street
from the electric lamps, one on
each side of the bridge, excited
some establishment among those who
had not witnessed the effect of the lamp a
Billingsgate and ON the embankment in
Illuminating the river. The quality of the
light, as we'll as it's quantity, appears to be
establishing it firmly in public favor, and
the objections as to the ghastliness of its
hue and the weird effect of the deep shadows
urged against the light as utilized in Paris
have found no echo in London. Last Friday
and Saturday being intensely bitter nights,
it was hardly possible for the delicious cool
ness of the white electric light as opposed
to the hot yellow glare Of gas to meet with