IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS AND APPLIANCES FOR ELECTRIC LIGHTING
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Richard William Henry Paget Higgs
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 5th February 1879.
RICHARD WILLIAM HENRY PAGET HIGGS, of King William Street, in the City of
London, Civil Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN MEANS AND APPLIANCES FOR ELECTRIC
LIGHTING."
The Invention consists in an improved lamp or regulator with its accessories, in
which the principle of lighting by incandescence and by the voltaic are is combined
with the advantages obtained by the employment of extra-currents generated in
the conductors, either as laid or wound on electromagnets, so that the light being
maintained on these three principles conjunctively is less liable to extinction than
a light maintained on only one or two of these principles.
The Drawings illustrate an improved lamp shewn in elevation and plan. It
consists of a base, upon which is mounted an electromagnet with vibrating armature
and a standard. The vibrating armature carries a block of carbon or other material,
and to the standard is attached a tube in which slides a rod of carbon or other
material. This rod upon passage of a suitable electric current becomes incandescent
between the bottom of the tube and where it is momentarily in connection with
the block. Between the end of the rod and the block a voltaic arc and the extra
spark appear. The rod is forced downwards by its own weight, aided if needed by
a weight, and it is prevented falling too freely by a counterpoised friction-arm.
The tube can be adjusted to any required distance from the block.
The electrical circuit is completed from the standard through the rod, the block,
the vibrating armature, and the electromagnet.
Although I have described the block as consisting of carbon, I prefer that it should
be of a refractory earth, such as asbestos, powdered and intimately mixed with a
conducting substance.
The rod to be made incandescent can be of any badly conducting material,
metallic or not.
The standard can bear more than one tube, and these may be brought superposed
to the block as the rods are consumed by an automatic arrangement.
Where rapidly alternating currents are employed I prefer to use instead of the
armature of the electromagnet a helix of wire so wound that either positive or
negative currents cause attraction, as in the well-known electro-dynamometer.
To increase the brilliancy of the extra-spark I may insert in the electrical circuit
an electro-magnet, or condenser, or secondary battery, which will also serve to
maintain the lamp in action during the temporary failing of the prime generator.

page_text: By the insertion of a series of electro-magnets the resistance of the exterior circuit
may be adjusted to the resistance of the machine without interfering with the
-brilliancy-of-the-light._By_the_use of the extra-spark the light lost by the reduction
of the current by interposed resistance is partly or wholly compensated by increased.
brilliancy of the extra-spark. By insertion of appliances tending to increase the
quantity of the extra-spark the character of the light may be altered, and increase
or decrease of the chemical rays obtained.
This lamp can be worked from an extremely weak electrical source, and the
source may be that of stored up electricity, as in a condenser, liquid or not, charged
at intervals.