St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1885-02-26
Progress in Electricity.

OF all the forces of nature, electricity
is to-day playing the most striking
, and important part in the material adj
vancement of the race.
In telling what electricity has done
|, in the past fifty years, the inventor
Edison says in recent article, sit has
strengthened the bonds of information
al amity it has quickened all the
methods of trade and lent ten-fOld pre-
cision and CELEBRITY to the innumerable
agencies by which it works.
at has breathed new vitality into
the arts and sciences; it has even
warmed and strengthened the social
forces, and has been such universal
stimulus as cannot be credited to any
other purely physical agency in the
worlds history"
Edison goes on to show how electric
ity, mainly in the telegraph and the
| telephone, has effected these results.
The system of telegraphy is a far more
perfect and efficient one to-day than it
/. was even ten years ago.
! Then but one message could be sent
over the same wire at the same time.
Now, thanks to. Edison's invention of
the quadruplex system, four messages
may be sent simultaneously over the
same wire and in opposite directions.
Telegraphy, moreover, has, within
recent years, been extended in its uses
in many ways. The telegraph has been
laid beneath the oceans, and now en-
circles the earth it is utilized for local
business in the cities it has been
brought into domestic service, so in
the cities one may at any time summon
doctor, marketman, fireman or police
man.
While the telephone is yet ia its in
fancy, it has yet already become a first
necessity to the people, both for bust
ness and private. purposes. There is
now no city or large town in the
United States without its telephone
station.
The newest and one of the greatest
triumphs of electricity is electric light
ing. The are light has come into very
familiar use in the illumination of open
spaces, streets and large buildings );
while the incandesceut light is gradu-
ally being adopted for domestic light
ing in many parts of the country.
! Besides these uses, electricity has
recently come to be employed in cleo
trn-plating, eIectrotyping, in houses
for call-hells, protection from burglars,
connecting clocks, lighting jets and
many other purposes.
But the promise of what electricity
is destined to achieve in the future,
ontstrips even what it has done in the
past. IN regard to this subtle agency
of nature, Edison declares that "we
stand to-day only on the threshold of
its tremendous probabilities.
In relegrapliy he believes that a large
number of messages will he sent over
IA wire at the same time; and that
messages will he 80 sent, that the hand
writing itself of the sender will be
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machines will he improved to greater
: rapidity of action, and submarine tele-
graphy will he brought to a higher
efficiency. ....
The telephone is also destined to be
much mere highly developed than it is
to-day. The difficulty of telephOning
to great distance remains to be over
come. This arises FROM ''the loss of
the current by static induction on the
earth and wires i'll close proximity"
If single wire could be placed so high
As to clear all the mountain tops, one
could hear whisper around the world.
But the time is near when the tele-
phone will transmit the voice perfectly
clearly for Il distance of three hundred
miles; and by means of repeating sta
tons, messages will be sent by voice
to all parts of the country.
Electric lighting, too, is certain, ac-
cording to Edison, TO be brought to &
far greater efficiency III the near future
Electricity can he used safely and eco
Ironically in lighting; and it can, Xix,
gas, be measured and sold by means o
metres. 1t can also be used in house:
for driving fans, for running SEWN:
machines, for pumping water, TO
working dumb walters and elevators
and for cooling purposes.
The future of electric power, indeed
j., is not to be measured in its pOssibl
:. varieties and Importance. 1t seems a
if the twentieth century would find
the most potent aud universal physical
+, agency ia operation on the earth.