The Monticellonian., 1895-03-01
IN THE ELECTRICAL WORLD.

A bill has been introduced in the legislature of Minnesota which pro poses to reduce telephone rates in the state about fifty per cent.
 To prevent the possibility of con- tagious diseases spreading through the use of the telephone, the Paris faculty of medicine recommends the use of a specially prepared antiseptic paper.
 The Great Northern Telegraph Co. has notified the Commercial Cable Co. that messages to Yokohama take seven hours and fifty-nine minutes, and to Shanghai, seven hours and eleven min- utes.
 A temporary organization has been effected at Greenfield, Mass, for the purpose of getting an electric railroad built to Turner's Falls. Local and Boston parties have charge of the en- terprise, and measures will be taken tc push it at once.
 Berlin Hamburg, Trieste and Vii enna were connected by telephone over 900 miles of wire few weeks ago and Copenhagen will soon be taken into the circuit The Danish capital already telephones to northern Sweden $50 miles distant.
 It is said, says Cosmos, that wom. ems voices do not give good results in the long distance telephone. Their high notes, excellent in short lines. as all city telephone subscribers know are an obstacle to clear transmission in lines of considerable length.
 Boston and Detroit parties are said to be principals in an enterprise which has for it's object the building of an electric plant at Ontonagon river falls. It is believed that the falls can gener- ate enough electric power to work all the abandoned copper mines in that vicinity.
 The General Electric Railway Co. was incorporated at Springfield, Ill.,, with a capital stock of 5000, 900. The company proposes to build and operate an extensive railway system in Chicago, employing a new and improved under ground trolley system recently invent. ed and patented bya Chicago inventor.
 The new telephone company now being organized in Atchison, Kan, re.
  CTS, but will not commence operations until 300 names are secured. Its prices are S25 year for instruments. They will use the Harrison telephone. The Missouri & Kansas company has 25C subscribers in Atehison.
 Prof R. T. Mac Dougal of the Min. nesota university is going to make a study of the influence of electricity upon growing plants. Currents ei electricity from the weakest (regis. tered by a galvanometerl to the full strength of the city electric current will be sent through the earth in which plants are growing, and the effects will be infinitely observed. Prof Mae Gougal is merely doing in modern way what has been attempted from time to time for century.
 A gentleman of Springfield has in vented device for dong away with the most serious drawback to the elee tric railway system when a break oc CUTS. It is new form of hanger tc suspend the trolley wire from the cross wire between the poles It is designed to divide the wire into sections as long as the distance between the poles, in stead of having it in sections of mile in length, a ; is the case with most elee tric lines now. The wire is broken al each hanger, and the device receive; the end at each side. the electric con nection being made through the hang CTS itself which is of copper and Il gooe conductor. The trolley wire is thus divided up into sections, which are about 125 feet in length, and have nc connection with each other, except through the hanger. The wire is so connected with the hanger that in ease there is any break, or 1t becomes loose from the hanger at the other end oi the section, 1t is detached antomatical- ly, breaking the electric connection and rendering the strip, which falls te the ground, harmless, instead of a deadly instrument. This result is at. tained by means of hook. to which the end of the wire is attached. This is so arranged that the angle caused by the depression of the broken end of the wire tilts the hook and allows il to slide out of the hanger, breaking the connection.