Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-11-03
TEN YEARS OF ELECTRICITY.
The Marvellous Progress That Has Beer
Seen in a Single Decade.

The Marvellous Progress That Has Been
Seen in q Single Decade.
Ten years ago the first central station
for commercial incandescent lighting was
established, and arc lighting was begin
ming to assume its present form; yet
single decade has seen the use of electric
light and power advance from the expert
mental stage to the very front ranks Of in
dustrial enterprises.
The most recent estimate of the capital
invested in the electrical industries in the
United States is 800, 900, 900, and Of this
amount S350, 600, 900 represents the proper
tion which electric lighting and power
have attained; $10O, 900, 900 is also the esti-
mated investment in electrical supplies, Of
which the electric lighting and railway
appliances constitute large proportion.
The influence which the Edison and
Thomson-H Houston companies exerted in
the development of the electrical industry
will be further appreciated If we consider
the slow progress made in this branch Of
science previous to the timApf their organ
ization. The telegraph was at that time
almost the only important application to
which electricity had been adapted, and
although electric lighting by means Of the
voltaic art had been accomplished by Sir
Humphry Davy as early as 1910 by means
of battery of 5000 cells, it was not until
1867, when DR.. Siemens announced his in
vention Of the self exciting dynamo, that
any material progress toward the science
of electric lighting was made.
At the Paris exhibition of 1878 the sys-
tenn of electric lightning invented by Jab-
lochkoff, by means of which several OF the
streets of Paris were lighted by electricity,
proved an incentive to inventors which re-
suited in the production of the modern type
of arc lamp, which was in a comparatively
experimental stage at the time of the or
ganization of the American Electric COM
pany of New Britain. The incandescent
lamp had received less attention at the
hands of scientists than the arc lamp when
Edison announced his invention.
The division of the electric current into
small units had been "a long standing
problem before the scientists of that day,
but all the experiments previous to Edi-
sons invention had been in the direction
of filament of low resistance, which OBJ
viously required prohibitive amount Of
copper to conduct the current for few
lamps, even over short distances. The IN
vention Of high resistance flament
marked the turning point in the history Of
incandescent electric lighting.
Thus we see that the whole of this great
industry has practically come into exist
ence within single decade. The men who
have been making history at such rapid
rate have been SO engrossed with the pres
ent and the immediate future that they
have paid little attention to the preserva-
tion of records, esc., that would not only
be Of interest but Of great practical value
to the great army of young men who have
taken up the science of electrics as field
for their life work. In the work on the
Richmond road experiments were made
with, perhaps, seventy-five different de-
signs for trolley. No memoranda or pho
tographs were preserved. and not even Mr.
Sprague himself can tell today just whas
half dozen of them were. This is only
one instance out Of many where data have
been irrevocably lost. st.-Electricity.