The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-17

lsol that Richmond installed system of 1 gas lighting for her streets Tn this she 1 was thirty years behind Baltimore, who ehJoys the distinction of having the first gas lighted streets in America.
 Tn the latter 'forties, when the present dome of the capitol at Washington was yet lacking, the wooden one then crown Ing the structure was lighted with gas jets. This was done at the instigation or man named Crutchett, whose quaint house still stands high above the street near North Capitol. He set nine street lights at his own expense between the capitol and his home Gas was put in the White House on the 29th of Decem- Der, 1SS, to the great delight of Presi- dent Polk. Since this tedious experi- ment the nation has progressed won derfully. Distance and magnitude of work seem no barriers nowadays. line from Greentown, Ind, to Chicago. a distance Of 115 miles, carries 720.000 cubic feet of natural gas every hour, under such a careful system that less than one per cent is lost.
 At Menlo Park, in 1880. Edison proved to the world the possibility of electric ity as a lighting power. In ten years time from the Menlo Park illumination, there were PTS American cities using elec- tric lights. The twenty-seven years that lie between Menlo Park and today have revolutonized the lights of the nation and the world. The United States is harnessing it's wsters and transmitting the power for lights over endless miles of mountain and forest and desert In one of the New England states, seven- teen companies are fighting for the priv flege of catering to the public. In Cali fornia one company controls almost the entire state. A company there furnishes electric or gas light to sixty per cent of the people outside of San Francisco. rf1n rfao1 F~1Y, secured on the slopes of the Sierra Ne- vadas, and lights twenty-three counties with an aggregate area of 15000 square miles,
 The world has gotten farther away from the light of the Cave Man in forty years than it did in the whole of the other six thousand that stretch between him and the present. Could the man In the skins come back to life and see a modern electric-lighted home of to- day he might think it the Paradise of which he dreamed in the lightless nights of his other existence. The full possibili- ties of the electrically equipped home are shown in the residence of MT. H. w. Hi1lman of Schenectady, N. Y. It has a chimneyless kitchen in which coal and wood and gas are strangers. This kitch- en has electric cooking apparatus, an electric dish washer, and next to it is a
 
 wringer In the bedrooms there are cleo tric grates, electric bells and electric pads.
 In the nursery there is an electric crib warmer and an electric nursery bottle warmer. In the bathrooms there are electric immersion coils to provide hot water when the heat is turned off. Then there is an electric sun parlor, electric messaging apparatus, electric cigar lighters, electric smoothing irons and electric hair curlers. An electric elevator carries one to any desired floor by simply pushing a button. The rooms are lighted by the invisible system. the lights being placed in coves or offsets where they cannot be seen. Although the lights themselves are invisible their rays fall in rich profusion in every nook and cranny of the room. The difference between all this and the feeble flame of the Cave Mans burning bough shows that the world is not living it's centuries | for nothing.
 Tomorrow-Central American Peace | Conference.