The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1903-12-27
WIRELESS ELECTRIC LIGHT
LATEST SCIENTIFIC MARVEL.
Moore After Number of Experiments Dcov
System of Illumination by Which Electricity May Be Piped
Through House Like Gas Water.

Lights without wires, fed by flames that
are cold and diffusing SOFT radiant energy
in the form of visible electric waves after
many years of laborious and patient re-
search by the worlds most eminent exper-
imenters. has been at last crystallzed into
q commercial luulinant.
This radically new system of illumina-
tion is termed modestly enough. by its in
ventor, Mr. d. Mcfarland Moore. electric
tube lighting, since the current of cleo
tricity, after Its conversion into visible
radiant, is piped through the house like
gas or water, and wherever 1t is desirable
to light a room the pipe, which is made of
glass tubing, about inches in diameter, is
arranged so that 1t extends all the way
around the walls near the ceiling.
BY this means the diffusion is complete
and the light produced is the most perfect
imitation of daylight yet realized by arti-
fetal methods in the whole history of the
art of illumination from the transition of
the tallow dip to the system now under
review, and which will in all probability
never be surpassed.
All the inherent difficulties of the mean
descent lamp, with its excess of red and
green waves which give it its peculiar and
characteristic yellowish light; the arc
| lamp, with its dazzling bright light con-
centrated in q 50-foot ring and absence of
red waves, and the Cooper Hewitt mer-
cury-yapor lamp, giving the spectator a
CHASTITY pallOr, are IN the new light entire
ly overcome and eliminated.
Oppositely disposed to these objection
able features is the Moore vacuum tube,
which emits the grayish-white color of
daylight. 1t may be stared at without in
convenience to the eyes and the synthesls
of red, green and biue-violet waves ema-
mating from it approximate closely to
that of diffused sunlight, and it is. there
fore. of great service in giving eolors their
true values
This wonderful light is the result of a
long line of experiments that began when
Geissler, noted physicist. found that by
exhausting piece of glass tubing, placing
electrodes or terminal wires at the ends
to conduct the current to the inner cham
Der and Theoretically sealing the tube, a
beautiful. soft, but very faint glow woulS
be visible In the dark If 1t were excited
by pictorial electric machine or an induce
ton coil.
ELECTRIC -W1SP.
The GeissIer tube produces its light
without heat, however. and this Is the
wfll-o' -the-wisp chased after by electrical
scientific men these past fifty years, for a
cold light-that is, light that does not
consume-has ever been the worlds de-
slderatum, since such illuminant would be
the least expensive.
In all the artificial lights heretofore
known, whether the tallow candle or the
electric arc lamp, the greater proportion
Of the energy supplying it is first trans
formed into heat and very small pro-
portion Is emitted as light; for example,
| gaslight gives off about per cent of the
energy originally stored UP in 100 per cent
OF coal consumed and the other So per
cent Is converted into heat
Incandescent and are and mercury vapor
lamps furnish a cheaper form of light in
virtue of the fact that greater percent
age of the available energy is transformed
into light waves. Seldom. indeed. it is that
when we want light we also desire heat
and vice versa; occasionally there are ex-
ceptions to this rule, as, for instance, last
winter, when coal was $50 per ton, the
hall room occupant would gladly light
the gas-when the landlady turned 1t on
SO that under the guise of per cent
illuminant he might also get his - per
cent ratio Of heat
But sold light, where all or nearly all
the energy could be metamorphosed into
artificial daylight. was prize worth more
than a treasure ship or gold mine in
California. and so the work of producing
an element at once so necessary and val
liable has resulted in unremitting labor
and, until Moore finally discovered the
long nlQuen secret OF nature, uHfeQulted
labor.
To exhaust his tubes of air Geissler in
vented pump which also bears his name.
but all his apparatus was crude, his sup
ply of electrical energy very limited and
his cold light a little in excess of tube
filled with firefiies
And all this time the tubes of Ge.ssler
We're only found in the lecture-room. but
with the march of electrical progress
came advanced ideas and superior appara-
tus, and SO these tubes fulfilled their mis-
sion, If 1t was only TO make men think.
Sir William Crookes. the indefatigable
British experimentalist, finally bent his
energies toward the production OF cold
light He thought that with the improved
facilities at hand he would be able to
get further than Geissler, and in this the
knighted scientist was right. He believed,
too, that what was needed was 4 tube
exhausted to a proper degree-but what
that degree was no one knew, and so
he carried out long series Of expert
ments and evolved many new and beauti-
full tubes which exhibited fresh and strik-
ing phenomena. such as the rndiometer-
a tube with four little vanea set on
pivot inside, which would spin around at
a high velocity from the implnging light