Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-11-12
Romance and Electricity.

1t is only fortv-three years since Morse,
poor and out at elbows. finally got Congress.
to vote. amid the jeers of the multitude and
the denunciations of the wise that the thing
was a fraud, $50, 900 to build an experimental
telegraph line from Washington TO Baltimore.
To-day the States of every civilized country
are festooned with wires. San Francisco
talks with Hong Kong, three-quarters OF the
way around the globe, and the people OF TINS
country alone sent more than forty millions
of messages last year. 1t is only twenty
eight years ago that the first fash OF lightning
passed under the Atlantic ocean; now there
are ten cables on that oceans bed. all
burdeDed with their tales of business ana
love. For years the demonstration 10 chemi'
cal laboratories burned a pair of carbon
points as one Of his most curious experiments.
But ten summers have passed since Jabloch-
koff invented the electric candle, and less
nu nber since the first arc light was used for
illumination in this country. Now every
considerable city and hundreds of our
villages are lighted solely by 1t. The
fingers on both hands do not have to be
counted to number the years since the lncan
descent lamp was put into practical use, and
now il is an old story. A learned professor
in Padua made miniature electric motor In
1880; six years ago an electric railway was
exhibited, more as a curiosity than anything
Else, at one of the European exDosi;ions; tor
a year a street railway has been successfully
operated in Berlin by this agent, and the New
York elevated railroad people think they have
perfect system by which it can be SUBSTITUTE
ed for steam on their lines. 1t may be that
in another half decade we shall have 1t har
messed to our cars. and without stopping tor
breath, winginR the impatient passenger
across the continent hundred miles an hour.
In other ways has this wonderful, subtle, and
universal agency, at one time the shaft OF Jove
that riffs the adamantine hills and at another
the family woolng breath that scarcely lifts n
flament of gold leaf, been Bonded to man.
will. 1t catches up artculate speech, and
takes the very lntonatiOn of the whispered
word DER many a league. With an artists
touch it goes over the finest engravings and
reproduces them, in light and shade, in tint
and tone. hundred or thousand fold. 1t
laws bit of copper over the transient type,
and To- the sentences of an orator become
unending words, more indestructible than the
cuneiform inscriptions that are gathered on
Assyrian plains. 1t comes into our houses
and rings bell if a servant should be want
ed. 1t guards a golden store. and summons
the ministers of law if the treasure is at
tackled. 1t watches over building and tells
the distant sentinel if unhsppily fire should
start. 1t does more. We dip pen into it
and with one stroke write a thousand letters
upon thousand sheets, each precisely like
all the others. SO rapidly has been the
movement in the development of electricity,
so soon do wonders dwindle to common
places in this swift day, that the age of cleo
tricty seems but vivid dream. Until very
ba hui 10