IMPROVED MEANS AND APPARATUS FOR ELECTRIC LIGHTING
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Henry Edward Newton at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 7th July 1879. A communication
from abroad by Harry Whiteside Cook, of Niederdorf Tyrol, in the Empire.
of Austria.
HENRY EDWARD NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane, in the
County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer.
"IMPROVED MEANS AND APPARATUS FOR
ELECTRIC LIGHTING." [A communication from abroad by Harry Whiteside Cook,
of Niederdorf Tyrol, in the Empire of Austria.]
This Invention relate firstly to an improved mode of and apparatus for
distributing, the electric current to several lights whereby a saving of battery (or
other generative) power is effected.
The Invention depends on the well known fact that the retina retains impres-
sions during an appreciable fraction of a second. If a momentary flash lightens
surrounding objects, the eye continues to see them for about the ninth of a second,
and if the flash be repeated before the expiration of that period and so on over and
over again, the result is an optical illusion, the light appearing to be continuous.
The apparatus consists of a drum or other suitable commutator so arranged as to
send a current to several lamps in succession. and revolving at such a speed that the
intervals between the flashes shall shall be so short as to produce the optical illusion
above referred to. In this manner not only is the loss unseparable from sub-division
avoided, but the same electric generator will feed a number of lamps each one of
which will be as bright or nearly so as if the power were employed on it alone.
The Invention relates secondly, to incandescent lamps. In these there is no loss
by sub-division, or to speak more accurately nothing is gained by concentrating
power upon a single lamp, the current may therefore be subdivided ad-libitum.
This and their comparative simplicity renders these lamps suitable for household
purposes, and it is the first object of this improvement to further simplify them by
doing away with separate regulators, thus leaving nothing to get out of order.
The arrangent for this purpose is as follows:-From a central station main con-
ductors are let out in different directions, their terminals forming the centres for
convenient groups of lights. The number of lights in each group is unimportant
so long as the conductor be large enough, but the area of each group should be small,
as from the terminals of the main conductors it is better that separate wires should'
go to each light, one wire returning to a model lamp in the central station. The
resistance of this lamp is carefully measured and the resistance of each of the lamps

page_text: The home lamp
This
in the group is regulated to this standard at the time it is set up.
is thus typical of the whole group and serves to regulate the current for all.
may be done as follows:-Let the heat generated by this lamp be thrown onto the
face of a thermo electrometer, and adjust the pointer of this instrument so that
when the incandescent wire is at its proper temperature, the pointer shall hang
perpendicularly.
If now the temperature of the lamp falls or riscs, the pointer will move to the
left or to the right, and in doing so it will send a current through one of two
-mercury-cups; these mercury-cups are .connected, with a rotary electro-motor as
follows- -One pole of a battery is in connection with the magnets of the motor
which is fitted with two contact breakers instead of one, and these are so arranged
that when the circuit is completed through one, the motor revolves in one direction
and when through the other the motion is reversed; these contact breakers are
in connection each respectively with one of the before mentioned mercury cups, and
the other pole of the battery is connected with the pointer of the thermo-electro-meter.
It follows that as this pointer moves to the right or to the left, the motor will.
rotate in one direction or the reverse, and this rotary motion being communicated
to a screw, a serviceable power is obtained for moving the regulator up and down,
its movements being thus governed by the pointer of thermo-electrometer.
The regulators are arranged as follows:-The current from the electro generator
is carried to a mercury bath, and the main conductors terminate in inverted
moveable cones of iron plunged to a greater or less depth into the mercury by the
electro motors above described, which are governed by their respective thermo-
electro-meters.
+
The cones are lifted when the electrometer marks too hot, and are plunged deeper
and deeper into the mercury as the heat diminishes. The cones should never
actually leave the mercury so as to make sparks, as the mercury must be kept quite
clean. The effect of the above arrangement will be to distribute the electricity
according to the relative needs of the various groups of lamps.
The gross supply of electricity may be regulated by the average position of the
cones. Let each cone actuate a lever, and let the ends of these levers come nearly
to the same point; above this point is fixed a spring balance from which are
suspended by strings short lengths of chain, these chains are attached to the ends of
the levers, which as they rise and fall will take more or less of their weight. The
movements of the pointer of the spring balance will thus register the variations of
the mean position of the cones, i e., the variations of their gross demand for
electricity. The mode in which the movements of the spring balance regulates the
quantity of electricity produced necessarily varies with the construction of the
generator, but the suspended chains may be of fair weight so that the balance will
have quite a serviceable power.
The Invention relates thirdly to an improvement which has for its object a still
further economy of electricity in incandescent lamps. It consists in making the
current for these also intermitted, that is, distributing it as in the first improvement
to the lights or groups in rotation, or where there are many groups fed by one
generator, then to sets of groups in rotation. The economy obtained in this case
depends mainly on the fact that while the heating power is applied to the whole
mass of the wire, the cooling of the wire by radiation takes place only from its surface,
the process of heating is thus more rapid than that of cooling, meanwhile the
current employed can be of greater strength without fear of melting the metal and
and as the heat evolved varies as the square of the amount of electricity forced
through a given wire, there is a further large economy.