The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1910-01-19
TUNGSTEN ELECTRIC LIGHT
METAL WILL CHEAPEN
ELECTRIC LIGHTING.

One October night in the year
1881, while Washington's cannon
were demanding the surrender of
CORVALLIS at Yorktown, a German
scientist, working in his little lab
oratory by the light from tallow
candles, discovered a new and most
unusual metal which he found i'm
possible to melt in his crude char
coal furnace. He called the new
metal Tungsten, from the Swedish
''tung" (heavy) and "sten' (stone)
because the heavy ores had come
from Sweden. Little did the old
man know, as he worked away by
candlelight to give his discovery to
the world, that his find would one
day, a hundred and twenty-five
years later, completely revolution
ize electric lighting.
Twenty-Five years ago Thomas A.
Edison produced the first success
full incandescent electric lamp after
other inventors had worked for
nearly fifty years to perfect the de-
vice. The filaments for Edison s
first lamps we're made of carbonized
strips of bamboo heated white hot
in vacuum globe by electricity.
After 1894 carbonized cotton cellu-
lose was used for the filaments and
it seemed as though the lamp had
surely reached perfection.
The filaments of incandescent
electric lamps were made of carbon
because no other material could be
found which would withstand the
intense heat. Every well-known
metal was tried but melted before
reaching the required temperatures.
Then the inventors began to ex-
pertinent with the more uncommon
metals and again a German scien-
tist took up the study of Tungsten.
At first the great trouble was to
secure pure Tungsten. This diff
Guilty was overcome with the aid of
an electric furnace, but the pro-
duct, in the form of gray, metallic
powder, proved so refractory that
it could not be melted into ingots or
drawn out into wire. An expert
mental filament was made by mix
ing the fine powder with a paste
and squirting the mixture through
die much the same as a spider
spins it's web. This thread was in
turn heated in an electric furnace
until the powder was fused into
the form of fine wire. With the
higher than any other known metal
it was possible to heat the filament
to greater incandescence, produc-
ing more and better light with less
waste of current in useless heat.
Then the electrical inventors
awoke to the fact that the very
substance they were seeking, that
which Edison had scored the world
to find, lay under their hand all the
time, and Tungsten, useless and
practically unknown for over a CEN
tury, came into it's own and began
the wonderful task of revolutioniz-
ing incandescent electric lighting.
The advent of the new Tungsten
lamp was startling to the users of
electricity for lighting purposes, for
they saw at once that the new
lamps would easily give the same
light as the common incandescent
iOI OuO-lllIu COSl' n
that was lighted by electricity for
$2.35 a month could be lighted
with the new lamps for seventy-five
cents. Not only that, but the light
from the new Tungsten lamps prov.
ed to be pure white, very nearly akin
to actual sunshine, soft, pleasing
and beneficial to the eyes, and moi
of a yellow cast like the common
incandescent lamps.
The new Tungsten lamps will re-
place those now in use without
special fixtures; in fact, any sixteer
candle-power incandescent lamp car
be replaced with a thirty-two can
cle-power Tungsten which will give
twice the light and save twenty pei
cent. Of the cost. The new lamp:
are the same as the old in size
shape and general appearance, the
difference being in the light-givinl
filament within the glass bulb. The
General Electric Co. has recently
developed special processes for max
ing Tungsten lamps.-St. Adams
Vt, Messenger.