The record-union., 1892-09-23
TEN YEARS OF ELECTRICITY.
The Marvellous Progress Shown in q
Single Decade.

Single Decade.
Just ten years ago-August, 1S92-the
nrst station for commercial incandeScent
lighting was established, and arc light
ing was beginning to assume its present
form; yet single decade has seen the use
OF electric light and power advance from
the experimental stage to the very front
ranks OF industrial enterprise.
The most recent estimate of the capital
invested in the electrical industries in the
United States is S700,000,000, and of this
amount S350. 009, 900 represents the pro-
portion which electric lighting and
power have attained; Sl00,00O,000 is also
the estimated investment in electrical
supplies, of which the electric lighting
and railway appliances constitute large
proportion.
The influence which the Edison and
Thomson-Houston Companies eXerted in
the development of the electrical industry
will be further appreciated if we con-
slder the slow progress made in this
branch of science previous to the time of
their organization. The telegraph was at
that time almost the only important APP
plication to which electricity had been
adapted. and, although electric lighting
! by means of the Voltaic arc had been ac-
compllshed by Sir Humphrey Davy as
early as 1910 by means of battery of
5000 cells, it was not until 1867, when DR..
Siemens announced his invention 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 lighting, invented by ia
Dlochkoi, by means of which several of
the streets Of Paris were lighted by cleo
trlclty, proved an incentive to inventors
which resulted in the production of the
modern type OF arc lamp, which was in
comparatively experimental stage at the
time Of the organization of the American
Electric Company of New Britain. The
1ncandeScent lamp had received less at
tention 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 tho sci
entists of that day. bat all the expert
nents previous to Edison's invention
had been in the direction OF Il fla
menU OF low resistance, which OBJ
Nlously required prohibitive
current for few lamps even over
short distances. The invention of high
resistance filament marked the turning
| point III the history of incandescent light
| ing.
! Thus we see that the whole of the great
Industry has practically come into exist
ence within a single decade. The men
who have been making history at such
/ rapid rate have been so engrossed with
! the present and the Immediate future
that they have paid little attention to the
| preservation Of records, ETC., 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 a field for
their life work. Ia the work on the Rich
mond Road experiments were made with,
! perhaps, seventy-fiye different designs
for a trolley. No memoranda or photo
graphs were preserved, and not even Mr..
Sprague himself can tell to-day Just what
a halt-dozen Of them were. This is only
one instance out of many where data
| have been irrecoverably lost.-Electricity